


October

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: October [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Murder, Depression, Drama, F/M, Friendship/Love, Immortality, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Murder, One-Sided Attraction, Racism, Redemption, Science Fiction, Slice of Life, Time Travel, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 01:38:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 45
Words: 156,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15675435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: It is not paradox to rewrite history, in the breath of a single moment a universe blooms into existence as another path fades from view, Tom Riddle meets an aberration on the train to Hogwarts and the rest is in flux.





	1. Chapter 1

Tom Riddle first met Death on the train to Hogwarts, although he did not know it at the time.

He had been looking for an empty compartment not quite willing to seek out these other wizards yet, not until he could get his footing at the very least. To go so suddenly from being special, to be so different from ordinary humans, to being one of a group was disconcerting. He had mentors now, others of his kind, he was no longer isolated in mediocrity but there were other times he felt loss because he had been something so beyond compression and now he was one of many. Perhaps brilliant, perhaps very talented, but certainly nothing that could not be imagined.

He had taken one of the last rooms sliding the door closed with a sense of finality, it was only once he had sat in his seat and begun to dig through materials that he noticed he was not as alone as he thought. There was a boy, someone around his age no doubt, sitting next to the window in the place where the light couldn’t reach. He wore dark layered clothing whose origin Tom could not place except to say that it was not English. His face was a pale immobile mask save for a single red scar, a crude lightning bolt, carved into his forehead and his eyes burned like sunlight filtering through green leaves beneath black feathered hair. On a whole he looked odd but it was even more than these individual features that Tom found disturbing it was the way they were put together, as if a very gifted artist had been told to craft a human and had ended with something almost but not quite, all the parts and pieces were there but they did not fit.

Tom stiffened as he caught sight of those bizarre eyes but in spite of the fact that the other boy was looking straight at him it was as if he hadn’t seen Tom at all. Almost as if he were blind his eyes stared forward, looking past Tom and the compartment, until it seemed as he was viewing everything and nothing at once. He seemed perfectly content to stare ahead with that strangely solemn blank expression on his face, Tom almost let him, but then gave into that nagging voice in his mind that told him that no one should be able to simply ignore Tom Riddle even if he was just another wizard.

“My name is Tom Riddle, yours?” He asked, the other boy blinked suddenly and seemed to focus on Tom an expression of surprise gracing his features. For a moment he said nothing but his eyes seemed to glow for a moment boring through Tom until they had seen all he had been and ever could be.

“This is unexpected.” The boy said in a soft tone that somehow pervaded through the entire apartment.

Tom wasn’t sure quite what to say to that, he felt the sudden overwhelming need to prove his existence to this complete stranger. He frowned and commented, “It’s rude not to introduce yourself when they’ve already told you their name.”

The boy turned from him to stare out the window taking in the rushing green of Scotland with those bizarre eyes. Finally he turned back with an almost haunted expression and whispered, “I am eternity.”

“I’m sorry?”

The boy looked at him and asked suddenly in a more present voice, “What year is it?”

“1938.” Tom responded without pause, “May I ask how it is this has escaped your attention?”

The boy tipped his head back and began to laugh suddenly spewing out words in an unknown language that rolled and lilted off his tongue, a jagged harsh laughter that seemed terrible and broken all at once. The question suddenly sounded absurd, even to Tom’s ears, until it was more ridiculous than not knowing the date at all.

Finally the boy calmed down with a strange half-attempted smile that spoke more of pain than any actual happiness, “Forgive me Tom Riddle, I seem to have misplaced myself.”

It was at that moment that Tom Riddle made the great error of disregarding everything this strange boy said for a case of insanity. (Although, once again, he would not realize this mistake at the time.)

“Does that happen often?” Tom asked in a dry tone that suggested that it did in the worst of ways.

The boy’s smile grew became more wry, shifted slightly, and his eyes seemed to sparkle, “Occasionally.” He sighed and became somewhat grim again, “The next great adventure, strange how I always think back to that particular phrasing, isn’t it? Yet, in this case, it does seem to fit. Or is it a prelude to the old adventure, who knows, I certainly never imagined that taking the train would involve this.”

He sighed before focusing back in on Tom Riddle, “I suppose you may call me whatever you like, I have no real preference and you do have a thing for names.”

Tom felt himself gritting his teeth at that last comment despite the fact that all that drivel beforehand had made no sense whatsoever, he knew that somehow it was a very specific dig at him, not just for his insistence on the boy introducing himself but something deeper. It was true, he had always hated his own name, but this boy couldn’t possibly know that. He managed to force his displeasure into a grin.

“Is that so, anything I want? That’s rather dangerous isn’t it? You could end up with something highly embarrassing with that kind of attitude.” Tom pointed out slyly, the other boy’s smile did not dim however, much to Tom’s disappointment.

“I find that I am that I am, Tom Riddle, a name will not change that no matter how hard it may try.” He said before waving a hand, “Besides, I’ve probably had far worse than whatever you can come up with.”

Right then and there Tom vowed to surpass that challenge and make this green eyed lunatic regret the day he had ever said those words so nonchalantly. He was so very possessed, more so even than Tom himself, a confidence that radiated outwards and caused everything around him to seem less definite in comparison. He seemed untouchable, the expression in his eyes at once distant and profound, as if he was staring down at humanity from thousands of miles above them. It wasn’t condescending either, merely distant and alien, but even so Tom hated the expression and this boy along with it.

“Well, for you I’ll have to make something truly special then, won’t I?”

The boy smiled back at him, “I’m sure you will.”

Tom decided to control the conversation once again, “Now that introductions are out of the way I suppose we can get to the real information. What year are you?”

The boy peered down at himself in a confused if somewhat bemused manner, inspected his pale hands with alarming interest before looking back up at Tom, “I guess this would be my first.”

“You guess?” Tom asked, “I didn’t think it was a debatable fact.”

“All facts are debatable when the nature of reality itself is in debate.” The boy supplied with a speed that was uncanny, “Still, that’s not really what I meant; I’ve just been deciding whether I want to go at all.”

“If you didn’t want to come why did you get on the train in the first place?” Tom snapped.

The boy’s face changed became older, his eyes grew dimmer as if clouds had passed over, and the cabin itself seemed to shift and grow jagged. In a soft voice that was far too empty he said, “I had spent too much time not taking the train that I no longer had a choice. In the end it was a train to Somewhere.”

“Really?” Tom asked in a dry manner, “Well now that you are on the train do you plan to go to Hogwarts, it’d be rather inconvenient to jump ship now so to speak.”

The boy considered the question, “I suppose, I have no reason _not_ to go really, well perhaps a few but nothing truly pertinent.”

Tom sneered but the boy didn’t seem to mind, in fact seemed more comfortable with Tom’s increasing displeasure, it was as if he looked at him and knew the universe was in balance simply because he was unhappy.

“Any ideas what house you’ll be in?” Tom asked, still with disdain but genuinely curious. Given the descriptions he couldn’t picture this boy in any house. He wanted to very badly as well, so that he could dissect him and stereotype him on given models, but nothing seemed to fit.

Again there appeared to be a lot of thought put into his answer it was as if he turned his gaze inward and had to search through himself to find any semblance of answer, “Not a clue.” He said finally with a strangely puzzled expression as if he should have known but didn’t, “You?”

For a moment Tom paused, he’d been about to answer Slytherin, and then amend that Ravenclaw was also a possibility but that had been just it, there had been no thought put into it. He’d seen the descriptions and he’d known instantly, and yet this unnamed boy had had to truly think about it before declaring simply that he didn’t know, was Tom somehow more shallow to have found the answer so quickly? Or, he thought snidely, perhaps the boy was merely an idiot incapable of the tiniest bit of self-reflection.

The boy seemed to catch on to his train of thought and waved his hand absentmindedly as if to brush away Tom’s concerns, “I think most people have at least some idea going in, I’m just a little bit weird that way, don’t mind me.”

Was it just Tom or was the boy trying harder; changing his speech patterns little by little so that he sounded more natural? Before, when Tom had first arrived, he had been nearly unintelligible and yet there had been a sense of poetry to his words, not with an accent but still in a way that almost seemed foreign, whereas now he still sounded odd but at the same time more casual. He was relaxing into something resembling a Hogwarts student, changing himself to fit some preconceived idea of what Hogwarts student was. Had Tom walked in on this student he may have found him just as obnoxious and perhaps odd but he wouldn’t have had that initial moment of doubt.

“How self-deprecating.” Tom commented drily, without any real inflection, and the boy shrugged with that same damned smile.

After that Tom let the conversation drift no longer interested in this bizarre future classmate of his, surely other wizards were more sane than this one, and pulled out some of his textbooks to glance at while he passed the time. The boy lost presence and slowly but surely faded from his mind until he was little more than the dark shadow he presented as he walked swiftly past Tom and off the train.


	2. Chapter 2

The boy from the train was, ironically, the first to be sorted. The group of huddled first years stood together in awe of the castle, eyes glistening as they fastened on the glittering gold of chandeliers and the spectral mists of the deceased. Tom himself, although no less amazed by his surroundings, also took time to analyze his peers. He was almost surprised to find that they seemed just like normal children, just like the children at the orphanage, similar to him in only the most rudimentary of fashions. He wasn’t sure what he had expected but seeing them brought an unexpected ache in his chest, as if he had wanted something more from them.

Once or twice his eyes had lingered on his companion from the train; he seemed strangely aloof, as if walking through a great bout of fog, unconcerned for the illusions presented in his surroundings. There was a slight, almost nostalgic smile, on his lips but it did not gleam and his eyes did not stray from the path before him. He walked as if he knew, without looking, that the universe would extend itself before him if necessary.

Each time his eyes found the nameless boy Tom would look away in annoyance, he was just another one of the mob, worse than the mob even. At least the herd of school children had some semblance of sanity. 

Perhaps the greatest disappointment of the night though lay in the fact that they were to be sorted by a talking hat. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, he had known it couldn’t be based on magical skill (the school promised to teach everything), and he hadn’t expected a written test for the same reason, but still a hat. Surely they could have come up with something slightly better than that. He wasn’t alone in his thoughts though, all the students, even those who had the air of being raised by wizards seemed shocked by the hat. In fact only one student didn’t seem surprised, much to Tom’s irritation, was the boy from the train. (He’d later find out that it was tradition to keep the hat a secret, for God knew what purpose, and that even in wizarding families it was considered in good form to let the children be surprised by the hat rather than walk in knowing exactly what to expect.)

Tom never did hear the boy’s first name that day, only his last; he had not thought it would be necessary to know him by more than a few syllables. His one thought, as Dumbledore shouted that strange almost reverent name, was that he was correct the boy was most definitely foreign.

“Azrael.”

The boy had walked with solemn grace to where the hat sat, those shifting green eyes had caressed its worn features, and with pale fingers he placed the hat over his head where it quickly settled hiding the majority of his features.

There they waited and waited. Tom took the chance to observe the audience of older students, at first they watched with vague interest, but then as the minutes wore on their interest grew and soon all eyes were on the boy in the chair. It was taking too long, Tom thought distantly, and everyone knew it. Dumbledore himself, the wizard who had introduced Tom to the wizarding world by pretending to set his wardrobe on fire, began to look troubled and the spark that had been in his eyes after shouting that first name was fading into something far grimmer. No one moved to interrupt the sorting but everyone began to watch with wary eyes wondering if the hat had finally broken.

Before anyone could say the thought aloud the hat said, in a curiously solemn tone, “Hufflepuff.”

The room let out a collective breath, the Hufflepuffs began to cheer more out of relief than any real enthusiasm. The boy faded back into obscurity with a small bow and wandered over to the table sporting yellow and black.

Later that hour, without much surprise, Tom was placed into Slytherin and told he would accomplish great things.

* * *

Humans never really changed.

Months passed. The days grew shorter as classes wore on with Tom indisputably at the lead of each one. It was strange, how extraordinary he was even among magic users, he had suspected that might be the case but it was never the less bizarre. They all happily proclaimed that he was a prodigy, all except Dumbledore who would instead eye him with a wariness that shouldn’t belong to an eleven year old, and Tom accepted it with as much humility as he could muster (which wasn’t very much but he did put on a good show).

As for his peers they quickly proved to be little more than the orphans with glorified power. Rich, entitled, elitist brats whose sole worth was based on their fathers and their fathers’ fathers they would sit and discuss their wealth in the common room sparing eyes for him only when it proved witty to insult the mudblood. After a few classes, where he had destroyed their academic standings, some had tried to find him and teach him his place. Tom had been playing that game for years.

They never did like it when the tables were turned; it always made him want to laugh.

Generally he was now left alone by members of his house as well as others, a situation he did not find unpleasant. He had never truly needed companionship, had learned very early that he could survive without it, could thrive without it even. So he allowed himself to be cast into the role of observer, the mudblood, who sat in the corners with thick books and watched the glittering archaic world that belonged to wizards with detached amusement.

Mostly the other students swarmed together in his memories but a few individuals stuck out for various reasons. Myrtle Stewart, his fellow first year outcast was one, although they had been cast out for different reasons. Tom Riddle was alone because he was a mudblood sociopath who had dared to be sorted into Slytherin, Myrtle Stewart was a social pariah because she was a shrieking banshee who whined at every given opportunity, her blood status didn’t help either.

Slytherin shared Charms with the Ravenclaws and though Tom was quite proficient in the area and very eager to learn more he couldn’t help but dread the period where he would have to listen to her insufferable whimpering and worse tears as she once again failed to cast a single spell. Tom was no stranger to the desire to _hurt_ to take others and make them _bleed_ , but he had never before wanted to mindlessly _kill_. Thankfully it was only once a week, the only other times she could be seen were those moments where she retreated to the girl’s bathroom in the dungeons to sob.

Abraxas Malfoy had also made a bit of an impression. He was the ring leader of the purebloods in the first year. A thin blonde boy with grey eyes he lorded over the common room with his tales of wealth and social occasions. It was amazing to Tom that someone could be so confident, have so much pride, when they were an eleven year old living at the whims of their parents and traditions.

Perhaps what also made Malfoy notable was his crusade to bring down Tom’s reputation with a word whose muggle equivalence in foulness would be whoreson. He had no doubt expected to be at the head of his classes, possibly having been taught the basics as a small child, and had been quite shocked when the uppity Slytherin mudblood had dared to surpass him. It was as if Malfoy believed that if he stated that Tom was worthless enough times he would suddenly become worthless and reality would reassert itself in a more pleasant order. Tom just smiled.

The oddest by far remained the boy he had met on the train, the Hufflepuff Azrael. Tom hadn’t kept too close an eye on him, he hadn’t seen the point. But he’d soon noted that Azrael had claimed for himself the outcast position in Hufflepuff, all they needed was a Gryffindor and they could have a little club, Tom thought to himself with a bitter smile. Azrael was not obnoxious like Myrtle nor was he a product of unfortunate birth like Tom, instead he was removed as if he was only physically within Hogwarts if there at all. Tom had never glimpsed him at meals, never passed him in the hallways; it was as if he existed only in the classrooms. He was very much foreign although no one knew quite where he was from, he didn’t appear to be from Europe at least not France or Germany, for the words he occasionally would speak when he forgot himself did not sound Romantic or Germanic in the slightest. He would quietly sit among the students, hands placed before him wrapped in black so that only pale fingers were revealed, and watch as his professors lectured even as it was clear his mind wandered elsewhere.

It wasn’t so much that the others disliked him or that he disliked others more that they drifted from one another trapped as if they were in separate planes. For the most part the strange boy was ignored or at least left as an unspoken curiosity, like the elephant in the room he would sit in solitude while everyone else looked everywhere but at him.

However, these were small observations, certainly nothing worth of Tom’s time. He ended up spending more and more time in the library, nose in one book after another, as he attempted to make the best use of his time in this strange new world he had found for himself.

For the most part Tom did not think on his peers.

* * *

He felt the need with Azrael, more than any other student, to justify his disinterest. To remind himself that he was better than the boy from the train and that the boy was barely worthy of having a name. He’d dully note the oddities surrounding him and then almost immediately dismiss him from thought as if he’d already taken too much time to consider him.

However there was one particular incident that dwelled in his mind whenever his thoughts did turn to green-eyed Azrael.

It was the first Transfiguration class, shared with the Hufflepuffs, and Dumbledore was surveying the students with a jovial smile. There was something so inherently false about the man, everything far too well placed, as if this were little more than a show to convince himself of his own kindheartedness. When he first saw Tom his eyes flickered, they darkened slightly, the show came to a shuddering stop before they moved to someone else and regained that cheery twinkle.

Dumbledore went on at length to describe transfiguration, the basic process, what it could achieve, and its dangers when taken too lightly by foolish wizards. He ended his introduction by distributing matchsticks to each student instructing them to turn them into silver needles.

Tom had been focused on his task at first but that was accomplished easily enough, without much thought the match stick had turned into a shining needle. He set it aside and began to observe the rest of the class. It was then that he noticed something odd, Azrael held in his hands a glittering needle as well, holding it up to the light to inspect its authenticity.

No other student had come close to making a needle yet, the rest still struggling, Dumbledore was still inspecting the others work not even thinking to look for those who might have accomplished the task.

More than that though his eyes narrowed as he searched Azrael and realized, almost with alarm, that the boy didn’t have a wand. Tom searched the table again, almost frantically, but again he saw nothing but the boys own hands holding the silver needle.

Dumbledore’s eyes met his for a moment, saw his transformed match stick, and disregarded him. Despite Tom’s own observations of the red headed professor he felt a slight sting, as if he had been unexpectedly slapped, and watched as the professor’s eyes made their way to the other successful student. At first he smiled, that cheerful smile, and opened his mouth to congratulate Azrael and then he saw there was no wand in the boy’s hand.

“Mr. Azrael,” Dumbledore addressed the boy, the boy set down the match stick and turned his attention to Dumbledore. It seemed that until that moment the boy had not been focusing on the class at all because his eyes gained a certain sharpness as they turned to focus on the professor. Dumbledore paused slightly taking in the intensity of his student’s gaze before continuing, “Where is your wand?”

The boy didn’t answer right away; he seemed to be calculating something, perhaps remembering where he had misplaced it that morning, finally he said, “Vienna.”

A few people laughed and Dumbledore’s expression darkened, Tom did neither, somehow in spite of the ludicrousness of the statement he wasn’t immediately writing it off as a joke, “Please, Mr. Azrael misplacing your wand is no joking matter. Do you remember where you left it last?”

Azrael closed his eyes and his hands unwittingly come out in front of him as he began to paint a picture using nothing more than words.

“Yes, it’s lying on the bedside table in a dark hotel room. The wallpaper is peeling and its floral pattern has almost been forgotten beneath the stains and shadows, there is a stale taste in the air outside in the street automobiles make their way through the crowded streets and people go about their day. The blinds have been drawn and the light floats in on half-forgotten dust.”  He spoke in a soft tone and yet somehow he managed to command the attention of these school children and this one professor, the giggling stopped and silence pervaded the room as the Austrian city was laid bare before them, “In the shadows a man sits, regarding his own thoughts and plans in silence, his fingers tap a restless beat against the linen of his trousers. Unfamiliar muggle clothing, he hates that he is so comfortable in it, surely something so wretched should tear at his soul. He has grown used to it now, though, and he finds a man can grow used to just about anything...”

He was abruptly cut off by Dumbledore who seemed to have found enough willpower to break whatever enchantment Azrael had been attempting to create, “Is there a point to this story, Mr. Azrael?”

Azrael’s eyes opened and his hands lowered back to the table, “You asked if I knew where it was, sir.”

“Five points from Hufflepuff for your cheek, Mr. Azrael.”

The Hufflepuffs turned to glare at their classmate and an undercurrent of displeasure made its way throughout the room. Azrael appeared not to notice, instead he picked up his needle once again with a sad but almost fond look in his eyes. It was never mentioned that Azrael managed to transfigure a matchstick into a needle faster than any other student than Tom without a wand and for a moment something burned inside of Tom for this other boy but the kinship soon died out.

It was the running gag of Hufflepuff, the case of Azrael’s disappearing wand. The professors no longer bothered him with point loss or frowns, some even smiling as they come to realize that Azrael truly did not need a wand to be proficient. A few even come to join the joke along with the students, asking Azrael where his wand was on any particular day. It changed locations quite frequently, Rome, Berlin, Budapest, Leningrad, the travelling wand was making the most out of Europe.

One student said that you’d think after all that travelling around Europe the wand would eventually make its way to England, a joke, but the boy hadn’t smiled and said with an air of foreboding, “It will come in its own time.”

However in spite of Azrael’s wandless abilities he was not considered the best in his classes. He did what was expected of him, performed tasks quickly, but would not rise to the occasion. He had no drive, no overwhelming desire to please either his teachers or himself. He allowed Tom to get ahead and that irked Tom to no end, to know that this other boy had talent, perhaps as much as him and wallowed in mediocrity simply because he would not try.

He was unworthy of Tom’s notice, if only because of that small fact, and Tom let him sink into obscurity where he clearly belonged.

Every once in a while though his mind would flash to that image of pale fingers holding a gleaming matchstick to the light overhead and watching as it sparked.


	3. Chapter 3

The second time he spoke to Azrael was at the end of his first year. He had been idly studying in the library having recently managed to get a pass to the restricted section from an older student and was slowly but surely making his way through the dangerous texts found within. The older student, a Ravenclaw, hadn’t questioned the few galleons that Tom had managed to spare for the pass or Tom’s burning interest in the section. Too focused on his upcoming NEWTS and a vague desire for pocket change he’d been all too willing to part with the pass.

Most of the books were useless but there were a few he’d found relatively interesting. He was working his way through a book on curses using dragon’s blood that seemed very enticing when he thought of what their effects might be on Billy Stubbs when he noticed that someone was standing across from his table. No one usually bothered him, certainly not in the back of the library, so he was caught a little bit by surprise. Frowning he’d closed the book careful to mark his place and looked up to find Azrael staring at him with a puzzled expression.

They said nothing merely eyed each other for a moment, Azrael’s expression not changing even under the force of Tom’s glare.

Finally Tom asked in as contemptuous a voice as he could manage, “Looking for your wand, Azrael?”

Azrael smiled, amused by the comment as if Tom had made some particularly witty remark, and shook his head, “No, enough people are already looking for it. If I were to get involved things might derail very quickly.”

“Ah, I see.” Tom said with raised eyebrows, “Well then, perhaps you’d best look into it before the train threatens to turn off the tracks.”

The boy seemed to take the casual dismissal as an invitation because instead of leaving he took the chair across from Tom and sat in it. He looked down at Tom’s book title and his smile grew a little broader as if nothing fit Tom quite like the various uses of dragon’s blood. Tom glared but to no avail and instead turned back to his book determined to ignore the intruder until he would go away on his own.

“I pictured someone very different when I constructed your image in my head.”

Tom looked over his book to glare at the boy, “What?”

“You have many faces, Tom Riddle. Faces upon faces, in truth.”  He said his features strangely soft, looking at Tom with a peculiar fondness, “I had expected only two, the true and the false, but it goes beyond that. You are truly a master of your craft, Mr. Riddle, and you are still so very young.”

It was a compliment, of a sort, but in a backhanded manner. The trouble was that given Azrael’s frankly bizarre expressions he couldn’t tell whether it was a compliment worded badly or an insult.

“My, what a compliment, I’ve never heard being two-faced put quite in that manner before.” Tom drawled.

“I’m just a little surprised; I’m very rarely surprised you know.” He said in confidence as if Tom was aware of Azrael’s own personality quirks, “So I always make note of things I don’t expect.”

Tom ignored him turning his attention wholly on his book, dead set upon ignoring any other idiotic thing that came out of Azrael’s mouth, one day he was going to hex that obnoxious lunatic halfway to hell, maybe he’d even use curses from dragon’s blood. He just had to find the right opportunity.

He expected the boy to loiter there, hopefully in silence, for the rest of the time but Azrael seemed to be done. He stood turning his back on the table before offering Tom one final comment, “When I do find my wand I will try to remind myself that for a moment you weren’t a king and not an outcast but simply yourself, who knows, it may even work.”

Tom only looked up after his footsteps had receded and he could no longer be seen. Why was it, he wondered, that he felt as if something might have just happened? As if he had been passed over by a terrible storm and only realized it as it left.

Far too melodramatic to belong to an eleven year old, Tom shook his head, next year he’d find the time to make sure this sort of thing never happened again.

* * *

An odd dream left half forgotten by morning.

Azrael and he sitting in a red desert watching an expanding star wavering in the distance as the universe tore away in a red blur. Azrael in his usual black but here it was Tom who was the stranger in a strange land. Tom felt nothing of his usual emotions toward the boy then, they seemed to have drained away, and there was only blankness as they stared into the void spattered with distant stars.

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” Azrael said in a soft voice his eyes blooming, growing flowers within their green depths, negating the desert they sat upon.

“I’m sorry?” Tom asked because he didn’t understand.

“I’m very fond of Blade Runner.” The dark haired boy explained, and yet didn’t explain, “Oftentimes I feel as if I am merely a replication of humanity.”

“I don’t understand.”

He was beginning to feel frustrated by that fact but Azrael only smiled a smile that Tom had only glimpsed once, in the library, but this one had more feeling in it. The other expression was a shadow, a slight distraction from the boy’s usual thoughts. He reached across to Tom and took his hands covering them with his pale fingers and looking in earnest at Tom.

“I have unwittingly destroyed the universe and although there was nothing left but the fires of my own presence I am unnerved and in mourning for the potential that has been lost.” The boy motioned to their surroundings with wide arms, “All of this has now been rewritten. It’s a dream, Tom Riddle, how can you understand when I myself don’t?”

They waited in silence for a few moments as Tom acknowledged his words and allowed himself to let go, if only for a few moments.

“Where are we, anyway?” Tom asked stretching back to look at the glittering sky.

“Well right now you’ve unexpectedly managed to wander into my brain but I don’t think that’s what you meant.” It was the most sardonic he had ever heard Azrael and oddly enough the most human. The boy then motioned to the expanse before him, “It is a memory, of things that will never happen, something that no longer exists unless I think on it.”

(At this point Tom became fairly certain he was dreaming because although Azrael was this cryptic and dramatic in real life he never managed to have this good of special effects for his poetic speeches.)

Tom decided to leave that question be for now and asked his next question instead. It was one that was nagging on him, one he felt he shouldn’t have to ask, shouldn’t even suspect to ask but one he was compelled to.

“Who are you?”

Azrael cocked his head and observed him, whatever bitterness on his face fading away until only a blank mask remained, his eyes had become sharp as they rarely did and Tom felt as if he was being dissected beneath them. Finally, in a calm voice that carried hidden weight, the Hufflepuff spoke.

“It is said that three brothers bargained with Death after crossing a river. In the version they told their friends they had managed to cheat Death and best him at his own game, years later when two died of more or less unfortunate causes their story gained enough of a moral to be cemented in the minds of children, only fools think they can cheat Death with a bridge. However there is also the version they didn’t tell their friends and that one is quite different.”

“That explained nothing.” Tom stated, “You’ve regressed from riddles to parables, I find this rather alarming.”

With that the smile returned and Azrael looked away from him and stood, clasping his hands behind his back and surveying his cold and deserted kingdom of stardust.

“It doesn’t matter anyway, it’s only a play after all.” He said musingly into the abyss and without turning his head to Tom he continued, “I would appreciate it, Tom Riddle, if you would leave my head now. I realize my occlumency barriers are pathetic but it’s considered rude to infiltrate another’s memories without an express invitation. Besides, look any further and you might not like what you find.”

With a wave of his pale hand the curtains dropped and Tom was left staring at nothing as the universe collapsed on itself and only darkness remained.

(When he did finally wake up confused and bleary eyed and certain that he had more or less dreamed about the damn Hufflepuff of all people, he became determined that one day he was going to make that boy hurt because no one had ever managed to give him such a migrane.) 

* * *

It was during the Christmas break of his second year that Tom Riddle found Azrael sitting on the Hogwarts roof.

Things had progressed only slightly since the year before. The tension in his house had lessened somewhat, his housemates still narrowed their eyes in his presence and turned their heads away, but their shame of housing a mudblood was not voiced as frequently or as openly. They had become bored with him as they might a shiny new toy, and those who were not bored, well they had learned their lesson.

The praise and points earned from professors hadn’t stopped but merely grown. He continued to impress them with both his skill and his desire to learn. Great things, they said to him, you will accomplish great things Tom Riddle.

He was still awed by the wizarding world, still constantly researching the limits of this new reality, but he was bored. He knew that in order to truly accomplish anything he would first have to graduate from Hogwarts, he was only twelve now, it would be many years until he would be an adult and could truly leave the orphanage behind. He felt as if he had been given a glimpse of freedom but then told he must wait for it, even as he was forced to stare at that vision every day until his skin crawled with wanting.

He hadn’t expected dramatic change, hadn’t wanted it even, while not content he was resigned to waiting. It was by chance then that he followed Azrael down the rabbit hole, or in this case, onto the roof of the castle.

It was past curfew and Tom was headed back from the library, he’d more or less learned how to avoid prefect’s patrols very early on in his Hogwarts career and was now confident in not being caught. He could have left the library sooner and avoided the trouble but the truth was that he hadn’t wanted to head back to the Slytherin dormitory yet, there had seemed no point in going back.

Passing through a hallway he caught Azrael rounding a corner. For a moment Azrael stopped, regarded him silently, they hadn’t spoken since that day the year before. Tom had thought Azrael might prove himself to be more obnoxious, take his own initiative and try to become friends, but Azrael hadn’t approached him since. He looked the same, his hair a tousled mass of black feathers, his eyes that distant green. He only stopped for a moment and then he turned from Tom without a word and disappeared from sight.

It was because Tom had nothing better to do that he followed.

Azrael proved to be abnormally fast, so that Tom had to jog behind him through the corridors wondering if he was going to get caught for this, but somehow almost miraculously they never ran into any prefects. Eventually they made it into the owlery where Azrael promptly strode to the open window and lifted himself up and onto the roof.

Tom stood in the doorway staring at the now empty space in the window with a blank expression. There was no space in his head to wonder why or how Azrael had done it, all he could do was look, and realize that he had followed Azrael to the roof of Hogwarts. What was he even doing up there?

Almost against his will Tom walked over to the window and looked up seeing Azrael’s dangling feet over the ledge. Azrael looked down at him with that strangely familiar smile that he hadn’t seen since last year, “Good evening, Tom Riddle.”

“What are you doing on the roof, idiot?! You’ll get yourself killed!”

Azrael looked shocked, as if Tom had suddenly sprouted feathers. His mouth had opened and his eyes had grown wide. Tom for his own part felt his cheeks burn in embarrassment, he hadn’t meant that, would normally never say that. It had just come out.

The other boy seemed to have recovered and regained his smile, although this one was a bit more shaky, Tom was abruptly reminded of that day on the train. Azrael had been put at ease not by a cheerful smile but bitter rejection, he had expected Tom to lash out, had wanted it even.

“I’ll be fine.” He said and then paused, “Is there any particular reason you’re here?”

Tom deflected, “What are you even doing up there?!”

Azrael looked up at the sky, at the thousands of stars littered above, and said, “I was feeling nostalgic, so I came to capture starlight.” He held a hand out to Tom then, slowly as if not entirely sure he wished to do so, “Would you like to join me?”

Tom resisted the immediate urge to tell him off, there was something in those eyes this time, something dark. As if Azrael, for the first time, was not entirely sure what was going to happen and was taking a leap of faith. Tom wasn’t sure how he knew but somehow he recognized that if he spurned Azrael’s hand now he would never see it again. Azrael might be distantly polite, might even act as he always had, but he would never again be this genuine.

He took the hand and tried not to look at the distant ground below.


	4. Chapter 4

Tom would be the first to admit that he knew very little about friendship. He knew what it looked like; whispering chattering people demanding things of each other that they had no right to touch. It looked exhausting, like a constant invasion of privacy that you were somehow supposed to enjoy, all while providing countless reassurances to the other person that you found them interesting and important. There were reasons Tom had never had friends.

In their so far brief friendship, if Tom was willing to call it that, Azrael had done none of this. No, if anything Azrael seemed content to let things lie, to continue to go about his daily business without the slightest consideration to Tom. Ever since that night where they had looked up at the thousands of stars, the light of which dwindled on in the universe even after they had burned themselves into darkness while Azrael motioned with a pale hand to  stranger’s constellations with foreign names, he had sat next to Tom in Transfiguration but he hadn’t sought him out otherwise.

In the end it was Tom who demanded Azrael’s presence at the end of Transfiguration, pulling him into an unused classroom so that they could talk.

“I want to learn wandless magic.” Tom stated once the door had been closed.

Azrael lounged on top of one of the desks, not even in the chair, and regarded Tom as his fingers tapped against the wood.

(Tom almost wanted to tell him to stop it, irrationally, to just sit in a chair and try to look normal if he could manage that. He wasn’t sure what it was about Azrael, whether it was any feature in particular even, but he was always unnerved by him and that fact alone had always bothered Tom.)

“You already know wandless magic.” He commented lightly, Tom stiffened wondering if he was referring to his days in the orphanage, but of course he couldn’t know anything about that.

“Not like you do.”

It was painful to say to look at that boy and be forced to see something worthy. In retrospect that could have been the real reason he had avoided Azrael so long, that terror and bitterness that Azrael was in some way superior; that he was better at magic than Tom was without even trying.

Azrael’s head cocked to the side, his expression almost empty, and in his eyes worlds were born and died all in the same moment.

“No,” Azrael said softly. He hopped off the desk in a curiously graceful motion landing on both feet and walking towards the door, “We won’t do this here, there are eyes everywhere in this castle, follow me.”

Soon they were walking through a twisting labyrinth made of familiar hallways, taking turns Tom had never thought of taking, until they were standing before an empty wall. Tom was about to say something about getting lost when suddenly a door appeared and Azrael motioned for him to follow him inside.

They entered what appeared to be a workshop of some kind, in the middle of the room rested what looked like an empty stage, a stool in the center. Surrounding the stage were various labeled bins containing a variety of materials that Tom couldn’t recognize. Azrael breathed out a smile at the place looking more at home than Tom had ever seen him in the castle.

After surveying the room Azrael turned to him, “It won’t be easy, it’s been a while since I’ve had an apprentice and you are not easy to please. It will be hard and it will be grueling and it must remain a secret. Not of word of this is to reach Albus Dumbledore, do you understand?”

“Why would I ever tell Dumbledore?”

He said it almost as a joke because he could not picture a future in which that happened but Azrael didn’t laugh, merely narrowed his eyes and said in a rather cold tone, “Make your eyes like mirrors so that when he looks into them he only sees himself and not your thoughts. Even words unspoken scream at times.”

Tom wondered if that was supposed to mean something, “You know Azrael, you should reconsider this wizarding business and become a poet instead because then at least your gibberish might be halfway appreciated.”

Azrael surveyed him for a few moments before sighing, “I suppose I’ll have to be frank then, if you find this out later and claim I lied to you, well I can only imagine the chaos that would cause. Albus Dumbledore has the ability to read minds.”

(This, he would later reflect, was one of the first brutal moments of disenchantment he would have with the wizarding world. It would not be the last.)

“What?”

Azrael seated himself on the stool suddenly looking quite exhausted, “The skill is referred to by wizards as legillimency and very few wizards are actually capable of it and even then most use it sparingly.”

There was a feeling of detachment, of being caught in time, his mind racing this way and that the image of himself in the orphanage that day with Dumbledore, “Are you a head doctor?” rushing before him and the wardrobe on fire. All the while this feeling of panic and the words, “What does he know? What did he see?” pounding in his head like an irregular sickened heartbeat and the terrible fear that Dumbledore knew Tom better than Tom knew himself and Azrael’s voice a dull narration over these images in his head.

“The trouble is that it is far from fool proof. There is another mind art called occlumency which works as protection against legillimency. A basic occlumens can’t necessarily keep someone out but they can notice when someone’s snooping where they don’t belong and beyond that occlumency becomes more impressive. A master occlumens, which is even rarer than a master legillimens, can alter their invader’s perception of reality and turn them into a lunatic if they so choose.”

But in Tom’s head there was only Dumbledore in his room in the orphanage and the wardrobe on fire between them.

Finally Tom managed to say in a voice that was distant even from himself, “I think, that I’d almost rather learn that instead.”

There was a sigh from Azrael, a slight quirking of the lips as if amused, and a slow shake of his head, “That, I’m afraid, is not my area of expertise. You have a good start already, you have the personality to be able to learn both, and you have experience in at least some mental manipulation. Within a year, if you truly studied it, you would surpass me and where would we be then?”

It was almost as if the room had gone dark and Tom could barely feel himself anymore, like it wasn’t Tom talking, but something deeper than Tom some dark cold logical machine that existed within him using his body like a puppet. “I do not want Albus Dumbledore in my head.”

“And you think I want him in mine?” Azrael asked with raised eyebrows.

“Then why won’t you teach me that instead.”

It was not quite a threat, not as blatant as the ones he had given to the orphans, to some of the Slytherins even. It was not, _I will slaughter you like a pig you shithead whoreson_ , but the intent was there all the same. Azrael had not stepped too far, had not stepped anywhere at all, but he had something Tom needed and extortion wasn’t so different from drastic measures in the end.

Azrael seemed to perceive the unsaid threat because his body tensed and his eyes never left Tom’s face. There was no arrogance in there only a cold confidence that saw Tom as nothing more worthy than any other piece of furniture in the room.

“I won’t lie and say that anyone can teach you the mind arts, Tom Riddle, but I guarantee that no one will teach you the magic that I practice. To teach Occlumency involves my invading your mind and tearing through each and every one of your memories until I practically am Tom Riddle myself. It would be the same with any teacher although they would not be so upfront with what it would involve. If you want your thoughts to remain private I suggest you learn it from a book instead, there should be something in the restricted section, since you so conveniently have a pass.”

A book suddenly materialized in the room, Azrael stood and carefully made his way over to where it rested on the floor, he surveyed it quietly and then threw it at Tom. “This should help. Now, Tom, do you still want to learn wandless magic or do you want to stand there and attempt to intimidate me?”

Tom didn’t look at the book even as he caught it but kept staring at Azrael who coolly stared back.

(Picking and choosing your battles was not the same as losing but it still burned in his throat.)

“The wandless magic.”

And just like that it was as if the moment was forgotten and Azrael wore that stupid childlike grin on his face. “Very good, we’d best get started then.”

* * *

Tom’s first magic lesson with master Azrael the Hufflepuff.

“A tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, what sound does it make?”

Tom told to sit in the center of the room and contemplate Azrael’s words could only stare at the boy and blink a few times trying to process the phrase and see if it actually meant anything at all. He routinely felt around Azrael as if there was some fuse short in the other’s brain and that he had no real language processing ability and rather talked like an overly poetic stroke victim.

They were in the same room but it had taken on a different appearance this time. It was now filled with every item imaginable looking like the place where lost student items went to die in abandonment. There were books, broom sticks, cabinets, picture frames, and every other useless broken thing heaped in some pile or another waiting for someone to grab it. Upon entering the room Tom had eyed the book collection and wondered if he might find something useful in one of them, forgotten things that they were.

“I assume it makes the same sound all trees make when they fall.” Tom said slowly to which Azrael smiled.

“You never were one for philosophy, Tom Riddle.” Azrael said with a smile before walking away from Tom and towards a stack of broomsticks leaning against a wall in the corner, “Unfortunately for you a lot of wandless magic is based on concepts that make reality a somewhat fuzzier contraption than you picture it, think harder and answer me in half an hour.”

“So I’m supposed to picture trees, for a half hour.” Tom said as he watched Azrael inspect each broom with a critical eye moving from one to the next with decisiveness that he rarely exuded in class.

“The trees are irrelevant, you could picture sheep if you so desired, it’s all in the concept.”

Azrael seemed content to ignore Tom and wandered further into the stacks of, well Tom could only refer to the items as things, searching for some random object that in no way should have been more interesting than Tom. If all these lessons were going to be like this, Tom thought to himself, then Tom was going to remove Azrael’s kneecaps for making him waste his time.   

“I thought the concept was the tree falling in the woods.”

He couldn’t see Azrael, the boy having wandered out of sight in the room, but he heard the sigh of exasperation, “Really, do you have no aptitude for critical thinking?”

It was at that point Tom managed his first bout of wandless magic for the day the pile Azrael was searching through collapsed on top of the Hufflepuff. Still sitting cross-legged Tom managed his first smile at the sounds of Azrael’s fruitless struggles, “Well, look at that, progress.”

(Later after Azrael managed to clamber out of the pile of forgotten school equipment to make his rumpled way over to Tom who just smiled and waited patiently Azrael had concluded on the lesson, “Perhaps I need to think of a different approach.”) 

* * *

It wasn’t as if Tom perceived Dumbledore in a new light after Azrael’s rather startling revelation. He had always mistrusted Dumbledore, felt he had been misjudged by the man, and if anything Azrael’s words had just confirmed all the suspicions he’d ever had and more. Azrael had assured him that Dumbledore probably hadn’t ever read his mind; that he would no doubt consider it immoral to invade the mind of a child, but Tom found that even the possibility of Dumbledore in his head was more than he could stand.

He learned occlumency as quickly as he possibly could and began to scrutinize Dumbledore more than he had ever bothered to before. In the beginning Dumbledore was a nuisance, always judging and condemning Tom for daring to be better than everyone else, now he was becoming a threat.

(Perhaps what was most insulting was not that Dumbledore was a threat to him but that he was not a threat to Dumbledore, at least not yet, but one day he would be and he would make sure the old bastard knew it too.)

What he ended up noting rather surprised him and showed him just how little he had been paying attention. Dumbledore disliked Azrael more than he did Tom Riddle. He had known Dumbledore disliked Azrael, had never given him house points for the perfect practical work done without a wand, but he hadn’t realized that this passing over of Azrael’s abilities extended into dislike. When Dumbledore looked at Tom his eyes fell a little flat giving him a perpetually disappointed look but when they turned to Azrael they were cold and just a bit harder. He felt he had figured Tom out but he wasn’t sure what to make of Azrael and that clearly bothered him. 

Azrael never said anything about it, just took it in that infernal stride of his, and let everything wash over him as if it never mattered in the first place. Tom was insulted by proxy.

“How can you stand it?”

They were sitting cross legged on the floor, Azrael tinkering with some metal contraption, and Tom told to sit there and find his inner self, whatever that might mean. Azrael’s compulsion to speak only in poetry often left Tom a little vague on the details until he simply had to sit there and wait for some more mundane clarification.

(He’d probably have abandoned this idea altogether if it weren’t for the fact that there were results, levitating objects wandlessly had become much easier, as had other wandless physical acts but even so the temptation to leave at times was almost more than he could handle.)

At the question Azrael’s eyes left the device and turned to Tom’s, “Stand what, exactly?”

“The professors here don’t even look at your work; they don’t even look at you. Your practical work is always perfect and yet you have never earned a single house point. Doesn’t it bother you?”

Azrael smiled slightly, “I have no desire for such materialistic things as house points.”

Tom failed to point out that house points were not the best example of materialism, Azrael had odd opinions regarding such things, “So you would let them pass you over, as if you were nothing?”

He looked somewhat solemn then, taking Tom’s words and categorizing them in his mind, until he finally said, “I will never be nothing. I may be cast aside, forgotten, and even left unnamed but I will never be nothing. I gamble with eternity, Tom, and the odds are more in my favor than in theirs, if it is a game at all that we play. They will see me again one day, even if they do not expect it. Besides, I’m not particularly impressed by my work either.”

He doubted Azrael realized how insulting that statement was to Tom, whose work was on par if not only slightly better than his, to have it dismissed for nothing with a wave of his hand. He must have caught sight of Tom’s anger because a childish, almost mischievous, smile graced his fine features, “You are remarkably sensitive.”

“What, then, would you consider impressive?” Tom asked. It was not meant as a serious question, a joking remark, bitterly spat out in a moment of frustration but nothing more. It held no true weight and yet for Azrael it seemed as if he had asked the world.

Azrael grew still and his eyes burned and said in the voice of prophets, “I have seen many great and terrible things but do keep in mind that great things can often be quite terrible.”

You will accomplish great things, the hat had said, sometimes it was more than unnerving the way Azrael unconsciously brought up these instances from his life. The boy’s words came off like a threat, not one directly to Tom himself, but even so there was warning in his eyes.

“I see.”  Tom said and even to himself the words sounded distant as this moment was stored once again in his mind, tucked away for safe keeping. He must have hit a nerve because Azrael didn’t grin as he usually did when Tom was discomfited but rather he turned back to his work without a word.

“What are you building, anyway?” Tom asked staring at the glinting metal.

“A variety of things.” Azrael his voice without inflection, “They may prove important later.”

“Care to be more specific?”

“Hm, I suppose I could be.” Azrael said and finally looked up from his the intricate metal gears which had begun to resemble clockwork, “I doubt you’d care about the specifics, as you call it, but a summary is decent enough. It’s insurance.”

It was at this point, Tom would later reflect, that the conversation took a strange turn. He was no stranger to having baffling conversations with Azrael that turned either into a philosophical madhouse or a riddle contest but this was different than that. There were times when Azrael became focused, he lost his distant gaze, and in those moments his eyes became daggers and his words became uncharacteristically blunt.

They had been doing these lessons for some time now and as Azrael had told him it was frustrating. Tom so far hadn’t gone through exactly a wide range of emotions, there’d been a few moments of triumph and even more of severely strained patience and even raging fits, but he’d seen very little of Azrael’s personality. In spite of Azrael’s moods he could put on quite the poker face, his face contorted into some emotion that never reached his eyes, it was very rare for those masks to drop and even then Tom had never seen them drop entirely. That day, for seemingly no reason, the mask dropped a fraction of an inch. 

“Insurance?” He asked with raised eyebrows.

“In a sense.” Azrael said implying that it was anything but mere insurance, “I’ve taken quite a gamble recently and I’m not certain I’ll have an agreeable outcome yet.”

Tom didn’t have to ask this time Azrael answered the question for him, “I decided to teach you magic and that has the potential to be a very dangerous decision on my part. Of course, this assumes my indifference will fade in time, which seems rather unlikely at this point.”

Azrael made a vague motion with his hand and abruptly a sense of levity returned to the conversation a small smile drifting to his lips, “No need to worry about that though, you still have a long way to go before you can get anywhere.” 

Somehow, Tom thought wryly to himself, those words were not at all reassuring.


	5. Chapter 5

He didn’t bother to ask anything personal about Azrael until the end of the year as the train to London was pulling out of the station.

He had not bothered to ask the headmaster that year if he could stay at the school, he’d already received his answer his first, and every time he thought about the orphanage he couldn’t help but resent headmaster Dippet. He had no reason to return to muggle London and they knew it, he didn’t demand much, he’d work in Hogsmede if he had to if only they just let him stay. There had been no question, no room even to beg, sent home no exceptions.

As he stared out the window watching as Scotland rolled past he thought about all his favorite people, Billy Stubbs, Dennis, Amy, how all of them would be there waiting for him just like old times. The first year had been like that, he didn’t know what he had expected to change, they thought he went to some special gifted school they didn’t know what gifts it was for. They’d still been afraid, the ones with sense at any rate, he’d made sure to leave quite the impression over the years but that couldn’t erase the gray shadow that muggle culture lent everything it touched. None of the books he read, the daydreamed plans, nothing could distract him from the fact that he was in some ways trapped in the muggle world like a bird who had only had a taste of the free sky before being placed back in the cage.

He wasn’t sure why he thought about Azrael right then, perhaps he was attempting to distract himself from dark thoughts of the looming summer or perhaps he simply caught sight of the Hufflepuff’s reflection in the glass whatever it was he turned from the window to look at Azrael.

Tom had always had a talent for knowing things about people, in many ways it was his business, from the very beginning it had paid to be informed of the workings of those around him. Things that seemed unimportant, the pattern of movement about Billy’s rabbit, Dennis’ favorite toy, these things had come into play in spite of their seeming irrelevance so Tom did pay attention to his peers even as he disregarded them. He knew Abraxas Malfoy’s favorite quidditch team was secretly the Chuddly Cannons, he knew that moaning Myrtle had tried seven different products and spells on her hair and each had failed, he knew that Dorea Black and Charlus Potter were engaged to be married in spite of the Blacks disregard for Potter light based politics. Most of this was easy to find out, people loved talking about themselves, but some of it took some active digging on Tom’s part.

He knew more about the Hufflepuff Azrael than anyone in the school but little beyond that. He knew his general habits, his demented manner of speech, and a few of his hobbies but that was about it.

He recognized now, having been associated with Azrael for long enough, that he had a bit of an issue when it came to dealing with the boy. His pride became needlessly involved whenever Azrael was even in the room, he didn’t even have to open his mouth and Tom would immediately find himself irritable and somewhat irrational. It could have been Azrael’s inexplicable giftedness when it came to magic but Tom suspected it had more to do with Azrael’s general personality, that calm unflappability where he stepped into a room and you knew instantly that he could not be moved, bought, or otherwise persuaded. The fact that he spoke like an exceptionally bad poet didn’t help matters.

At the moment Azrael was sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed looking like he was contemplating the meaning of life or something else equally ridiculous. Once again that creeping urge to ignore him or otherwise cut him down made its way into his head, his eyebrows twitched as he attempted to remain impassive, he never had been good at denying temptation.

“Where do you live?”

Azrael started slightly at the demanding tone of Tom’s voice and his eyes opened, “Hm?”

“You can’t live in England.” Tom stated with finality causing Azrael’s lips to quirk slightly as he found something distantly funny, “So where do you come from?”

“Believe it or not for quite some time I was English.” Azrael said with a shrug before sighing and continuing, “But that was a while ago and to be honest I’ve never really liked England all that much, I was never myself when I was English.”

“That didn’t answer the question.” Tom stated blandly.

Again, Azrael shrugged and lifted his hands slightly as if to convey that these were the answers he was going to give no more and no less, “England I suppose, that seems easiest in a way.”

(Tom wondered for a few moments how it was that he had allowed himself to become even vague acquaintances with Azrael.)

“Right, easiest. Well, where exactly in England is it _easiest_ for you to stay?”

“London probably.”

He wondered if he should inform Azrael that Wool’s Ophanage was conveniently located in London as well. He could, it might be interesting, certainly more interesting than the previous summer had been. Azrael had hinted during some of the lessons, when pestered enough by Tom, that he knew several glaring loopholes in the trace something Tom very much wished to find out.

It was tempting, in its own way, but there were consequences to that sort of decision.

If Azrael caught a glimpse of Tom in the orphanage then Tom would never be able to take that impression back. It would be there forever, imprinted in his brain, Tom the mudblood orphan living in squalor and poverty with the Billy Stubbs of the world. He would see that, in some ways, every word out of the elite purebloods’ mouths was justified.

So Tom didn’t extend to Azrael an invitation and from the look on Azrael’s face it didn’t seem as if he had expected one. Sometimes Azrael was so perceptive it was uncanny.

“You’re last name, it isn’t English.” Tom commented instead.

“No, it isn’t really.” Azrael agreed, “It isn’t really my name though.”

“What do you mean it isn’t your name?” Tom asked sharply thinking back to Dumbledore’s reading of the list, the very first name that came out, _Azrael_. “I was there for the sorting ceremony you know, I heard Dumbledore say it quite clearly.”

“Oh, yes, that.” Azrael said with a sigh, “Azrael is really more of an idea than anything else and while it’s true that I’m called it occasionally I’ve also been called a lot of other things as well. I think the school had to pick something, and well, some of my epithets are softer than others Azrael being one of them. At the end of the day I don’t think I have a name, not in the human sense at least.”

Tom pondered that for a moment remembering his introduction to Azrael, _I suppose you may call me whatever you like, I have no real preference and you do have a thing for names_ , and wondered if he was supposed to make anything of it. He said he knew nothing personal about Azrael and he felt this was true but sometimes he felt that he caught glimpses of Azrael, left in cryptic statements that seemed like nonsense, but he could never tell if he was making sense of them or if they were simply meaningless.

“And you think I have an ego, epithets, really Azrael. Even I don’t claim to have titles, don’t you think that’s a bit low?”

This won one of Azrael’s childlike grins that he wore whenever Tom had said anything unintentionally amusing, it seemed to be one of his more unintentionally witty moments because Azrael actually began to laugh before breaking down in hysterics leaving Tom sitting on the bench staring at him with a blank look on his face.

“See, Azrael,” Tom said in the midst of the Hufflepuff’s hysteria, “This is why you have no friends." 

(Over the summer he would exchange several letters with Azrael, whose location he was never quite clear on, and he would discover to his surprise that Azrael was just as if not more so unintelligible in writing as he was in person. Still it was better than anything the muggle orphans had to offer.)  

* * *

Tom had learned not to associate himself with muggles, he never had in the beginning after all, he had always known he was different. He had thought now that he was a wizard that it would be easy to leave, that he would only have to endure a few summers of the orphanage but then he would be gone, that the muggles couldn’t touch him anymore. That was the extent of their reach, the extent of the tainting of the word mudblood on him, but mudblood ran deeper than skin it seemed that it stretched into his very bones until even he could not escape it.

War had been declared on Germany in the spring of his second year. He hadn’t paid much mind as German troops marched on Poland as the news had barely managed to even make the Prophet. It was a small section, not even on the front page, Muggle Britain declares war on Germany. He’d remembered sitting there and thinking back on the last war, the Great War, and he wondered if that had even made the papers. It had seemed so distant though, so casual and unimportant, an afterthought really.

When Tom told Azrael, later that week in the Room of Requirement, the boy had stilled and the room seemed to go dark before light reasserted itself and a more tired looking Azrael remained. Azrael had turned to Tom with a more decisive look on his face than usual and said, “We’ll work on warding.”

For weeks they had abandoned previous exercises, thankfully as Tom never seemed to get anywhere with them, and instead Tom was given rushed lessons on complex warding systems. Unlike Azrael’s usual method of building from the ground up these were poured into his head without the means of understanding them only the instruction that he know them and he know them well. After Tom had managed to produce satisfactory results they dropped the topic and returned to their usual cryptic ridiculousness that somehow was supposed to equate into wandless magic without mentioning why they’d taken that little detour.

In September of 1940, his third year, the bombings on London began and they did not stop until May. At the time though the end of the year had been approaching and Tom was left wondering if the orphanage would still be there when he arrived and if it was what would happen if they were bombed. Somehow, Azrael had known the moment the war had been mentioned, that Tom would need to be able to create wards strong enough to shield from bombs and be able to make them fast and make them long lasting.

Once again, as he had done in his first year, he asked if he could stay swallowing his pride and appealing to what he hoped was Dippet’s good reason. He wasn’t like Myrtle Stewart or any other muggle born student, should London continue to be bombed then he would have nowhere to go, he was an orphan who had nothing.

The headmaster had just smiled at him, shook his head, and said that no exceptions could be made but he was terribly sorry about it all. In that moment Tom realized that he wasn’t truly divorced from the muggle world, somehow, in spite of being a wizard and being superior to most other wizards he was still cast aside as if he was nothing. They pretended to care for their own but would it really be so terrible for these people if Tom ceased to exist in the three months he wasn’t at the school? Would they care for more than a few moments where they mourned his lost potential?

He had never had great faith in humanity but whatever faith he had in wizards had shattered that day when he walked down the spiraling steps of the headmaster’s office his face a cold mask as his emotions boiled beneath.

He had always suspected that at the end of the day there would only be Tom Riddle but it was only then that he really knew.


	6. Chapter 6

The first time he professed a fraction of his ambitions was in Divination while discussing the nature of tea and reality. One would think that in a setting like that the conversation would have been more meaningful but the truth was that at that point in his life there was not much to tell. There had been nothing solid in his mind, just a vague desire to not just get out, but to transcend. Tom Riddle was no longer good enough, he had to be something else, something more than Tom Riddle ever could be. At the age of thirteen these were only ideas, nothing more than summer daydreams, and thus even he didn’t take them too seriously at the time. No, it wouldn’t be until after his third year that he would begin to truly think on them as something more than hazy visions.

Still, he did have one thing set, Voldemort. This new personage, this man who was purely a wizard, would be called Voldemort.

So it was then that a newly determined Tom Riddle sat across from the Hufflepuff Azrael in a classroom cluttered with tea cups, crystal balls, and tarot cards. Azrael for his own part was the same as Azrael ever was.

Azrael was prone to certain moods. It was not evident to those he didn’t regularly converse with but sit at the same table with him for almost a year and it became very clear. Some Tom tolerated more than others but what he found to be one of the worst were not Azrael’s periods of depression but rather his childish displays whenever he got a little too bored or irritated. It was almost embarrassing to be sitting in the same room as him let alone at the same table. 

Over the summer of their second year, while exchanging letters, Tom had managed to convince Azrael to take the same electives as him in the next school year. There had been no objections to Ancient Runes or Arithmancy but Azrael had been rather reluctant to take Divination. It was generally hard to get any true emotion from Azrael’s letters but even through ink Tom could sense Azrael’s rather uncharacteristic hesitation. Even after he had accepted and agreed to do it he still looked somewhat unsure of his decision.

As it turned out when uncomfortable Azrael would ultimately attempt to take it out on Tom by being as obnoxious as possible.

“I see me, dying in a very grizzly manner, torn apart by a very large dog that looks something like the Grim.” Azrael passed Tom the cup with a sense of authority so that Tom could see for himself the mangled limbs in the tea leaves.

“That’s rather specific, you must have quite the gift for divination.” Tom said staring at the green flecks at the bottom of the tea cup which resembled, in Tom’s opinion, an amorphous blob rather than a dog. Although, if it was a particularly vicious dog, then perhaps those were the remains of the victim after it was done, still that was quite a stretch for tea.

Azrael shrugged uncomfortably with a somewhat sheepish expression on his face, “Oh well, I suppose I’m cheating a little bit.”

Tom’s eyebrows raised and inspected the cup again, “And how exactly did you manage to cheat tea, Azrael?”

“To be honest I’m not really sure I believe in this telling the future business. I imagine our place in the present moment to be a particle of light in a great infinite star, all around us the possibilities of our past and future choices stretch, until all eventualities are eventual. It’s true that some events are more probable than others but destiny is such a human invention at the end of the day.” Azrael again shrugged and took back the tea with a sigh inspecting the cup and eyeing the kettle with interest, probably debating whether he wanted to pour himself some tea and ruin the lovely image of himself getting eaten by wild dogs.

“You know I always assumed I would see something more morbid than you but mine looks like a flower and by the way that still doesn’t explain how you cheated although your words were very pretty.” Tom said looking at his own tea cup, to tell the truth it looked like any shape, he had a feeling that he wasn’t artistically inclined enough to take the reading of tea leaves seriously he hoped that other units would be more reliable.

Azrael didn’t smirk, it really wasn’t his style, but he did give cheery grins but that was almost more obnoxious.

“Oh my future is always death.”

Tom placed down his tea cup warily looking at Azrael and wondering how seriously he should take that statement. He looked across the room, the professor hadn’t quite made it over to them yet and seemed to be taking his time explaining the art of tea leaves to another pair of students. (Not that the professor would really care; professors tended to be a little unnerved by Azrael and generally spent as little time around him as possible. This particular professor had quite a strong reaction, as they were walking in, Azrael with a grim look on his face that spoke volumes about his unwillingness to take the class the professor had proclaimed it was the apocalypse. Azrael’s only response was that the man, despite everything, apparently wasn’t a fraud.)

“Is that so?”

Azrael inclined his head slightly staring at the kettle, “I don’t believe humans have a destiny however sometimes we do have roles to play; death is mine, it always has been, even when I pretended it wasn’t. Death is my gift.”

“Roles, Azrael, I wonder if we don’t all have some role to play, some vague badly defined destiny handed to us.” He mused looking at the center of his tea cup but thinking of the sorting hat sitting on his head, great things it had said, and when exactly could great things begin and where did they start?

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know, something more…” He set the tea cup down and instead observed the boy sitting across from him, he looked the same as ever, perhaps slightly taller than the year before, a little thinner and sharper but with the same eyes. A mudblood couldn’t be reflected there, he couldn’t see it, “I can’t be the same as Moaning Myrtle, Azrael. I have to do something more, something great.”

He must have said something then, some trigger that set Azrael on edge, he said them every now and again some small unidentifiable reminder that made the Hufflepuff’s fingers twitch and his eyes grow wide in horrified recognition. This time though it wasn’t as abrupt as others, it wasn’t as cold; it was still Tom reflected in those eyes instead of a faceless stranger.

They sat in silence for a few moments, Azrael appearing to think something over deeply, looking not only pensive but somewhat sad as well. When he did speak it was somewhat distantly, dully, without any real thought behind it, “Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”

It was not said like a warning, or any kind of omen, it was as if Azrael had already resigned himself to the fact that Tom would not listen. A year before he would have scathingly replied back to the Hufflepuff, telling him to mind his own business, at this point he just felt tired and the tiniest glimmer of something that could be fondness.

“That one doesn’t sound like one of yours; it made far too much sense.” Tom commented drily.

“It’s not.” Azrael replied a little more life coming back into his eyes, “It’s from a book that may or may not be written. Great, for me, is a very loaded word. I’d prefer it if you used a different one. Extraordinary might be better.”

“Then I shall be extraordinary.” He picked up his own tea cup and held it before Azrael’s eyes, “See, even the tea agrees.”

Azrael’s eyebrows raised slightly, as if surprised by the sudden bout of optimism and determination, but it had been a particularly long summer and Tom felt he was entitled to a vision or two.

“Really?” Azrael asked, “I thought you saw flowers.”

But of course Azrael, being in one of his moods, had to go out of his way to spoil any moment. It was almost expected at this point.

“I’ve changed my mind, I also see you dying in a rather horrific manner, it looks like your head’s just been impaled on a spike. So, Azrael, let’s make a bet. Dog or beheading? Your choice.” 

Azrael appeared to put great thought into weighing his options finally he said, “Dog first then beheading.” 

* * *

A collection of facts about the Hufflepuff Azrael.

In days off he enjoyed spending time with thestrals but he never said the name of the corpse he had seen.

He never received letters and when asked if he had any family he looked distantly sorrowful and often refused to answer.

He had an eye for mischief that was not evident at first, but when presented with Hogsmede’s joke shop his eyes had glittered with childish delight, an expression that almost made Azrael appear like a child to Tom’s surprised eyes.

He claimed Jörmungadr slept beneath Hogwarts in the Chamber of Secrets and that when woken it would prove to be both hungry and quite racist.

He had no plans for exiting Hogwarts but merely expected to drift into the Scottish highlands after Graduation and from there into the stars themselves. Whenever he spoke of these plans his pale hands would wander upwards like birds to mark a path to the red eye called Mars.

He did not believe in the sorting system and thus rarely identified himself as being a Hufflepuff. He said he had problems on deciding a human’s personality at the limiting age of eleven without experience or time to judge them by. He also said that life rarely gives us only four paths to choose from when we are lost in the woods.

He said that he was not a pureblood, that he had grown up with muggles and had expected Tom to believe him only because of the fierce insistence in his eyes.

Hogwarts was barely a place to him, he existed within it but it could have been replaced by any other magical school, any other city even and he would have remained the same. He was untouchable in the all the ways Tom wished to be and yet that he could not help but find unnerving.

He believed in physics almost more than he did magic if one were to glance at his notes for most classes, they would find formulas and theories, rather than anything the professor had bothered saying.

Despite being perhaps the most or second most magically gifted student in their class his true talent lied in invention a realm Tom only glimpsed when they were in the Room of Requirements but something he appreciated when Azrael was in the mood to divulge secrets.

He was failing History of Magic solely because he never actually went to class, he had a theory that Professor Binns had secretly died years before and was now just a ghost forever monologuing the history of the Goblin wars that had taken place in the 19th century. Tom didn’t fault him, History of Magic was exceedingly dull, but he could have at least made some attempt to pass the class.

At the end of Tom’s third year, when he was heading back into a bomb-riddled city, unsure of his prospects Azrael had said in respect to his wizarding peers, “They are human too, in time, they will also know the face of war.”

* * *

He only ever attended one meeting of the Slug Club.

It had started off well enough, he’d received his invitation handwritten by a grinning Slughorn during Potions the week before, and had been told by his head of house that it was the place to be if you wanted to know the right people.

It was left unsaid that the fourteen year old Tom Riddle, being an impoverished mudblood orphan, desperately needed to know the _right_ people.

With that golden ticket he could join the ranks of his favorite peers, Abraxas Malfoy, the Black siblings, Charlus Potter, and every other pureblood heir he could name and maybe the token quidditch star just to cover all the bases.

His relationship with his housemates had settled over the years into something quite monotonous. His housemates in a way had outgrown him, he was no longer a novelty, it had been four years after all there were other things to talk about besides the know-it-all mudblood who dared to stain their carpets with his dirty footprints. Girls had become the main topic of conversation and frequently Tom would walk through the common room only to overhear the near weekly rating of the Hogwarts selection with Dorea Black standing near unchallenged at the top and the shrieking harpy Walburga resting safely at the bottom.

Still, not everyone got an invitation to the Slug Club, so he was hardly going to turn down the first one.

That night Azrael threw an impromptu celebration to congratulate him on his, “golden opportunity to ingratiate himself with the future Wizengamot and build the foundations for his standing army.”

They had walked into the Room of Requirement which redecorated itself into something that resembled a very expensive restaurant complete with crystal wine glasses and chandeliers.

“Standing army, Azrael, I’m not sure what future you think I have planned for myself but there’s hardly an army involved.” Tom had said looking around the room somewhat stunned thinking, if only to himself, that he had never been in a place that made him feel this poor.

But Azrael was grinning and walking past him towards the table shaking out his hands, “Now the food will be tricky, it always is, bending the laws like this but…” He paused before the table, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, his pale hands rising slightly and for a moment there was only the feeling of power sweeping through the room and then there was cake. “I suppose this is one of the benefits of being me.”

Tom stared at the cake with dubiously raised eyebrows, he didn’t doubt it being real, but at the same time he really wanted to ask if Azrael had broken one of the laws of magic for cake or if he was just in one of those moods again.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the cake, Azrael,” Tom said taking one of the seats at the table and staring at the white frosting and trying to think about the last time he had ever even eaten cake, “But really, we’ve known I was going to be invited to the Slug Club for years, Slughorn himself assured me multiple times, for years really.”

Azrael plopped into the seat across from him and began dividing the cake taking a rather large slice for himself, “It would be a rather odd reality if you somehow hadn’t been invited. We can all relax, the universe is at peace, Tom Riddle has been invited to the Slug Club where he will display the patience of God as he seeks to turn the world on its head.”

If he had the patience of God he wouldn’t feel like throwing text books at Azrael’s head whenever he got like this. Patience was hardly one of his virtues, Azrael should have known that from all the damned wandless lessons, but sometimes he felt like Azrael didn’t really see him at all but rather saw some template that he had initially created for Tom. It was accurate enough that for the most part, Tom fit neatly in the checked boxes, but sometimes he strayed from those unsaid expectations and that always would disturb Azrael.

“Surely it won’t be that insufferable, besides it’s not as if you’ll be going.” Tom muttered getting himself a thin slice of cake with a sigh.

That weekend he found himself seated between Abraxas Malfoy and Orion Black as they each listened to Slughorn’s rendition of the who’s who and the important connections that could be made in one’s youth. Before him on the table Tom counted at least six different sets of silverware for each person, the forks displayed in an arrange of shapes and sizes that Tom hadn’t known existed previously. In somewhat worn second hand dress robes he played the role of the shabby scholarship student quite well looking quite impoverished amongst his wealthy peers.

He couldn’t help but feel, that if this were truly a measure of talent instead of nepotism, that there was one seat missing at the table. Then again, at this point it was almost a given that the Hufflepuff Azrael was overlooked by each and every member of the Hogwarts faculty, only Tom had ever truly recognized his talents.

His only real thought during the whole thing was not a grand strategy on how to further his standing in wizard society but instead the single phrase repeated over and over again. I don’t belong here.

“It’s Tom, right?” Tom looked up during the socializing session after the dinner to find Charlus Potter staring at him. Slughorn was currently in what looked to be like a philosophical debate with Malfoy, which probably meant that Malfoy was spouting off the usual pureblood Slytherin ideology and Slughorn was debating with more recent research while trying to give the conversation an academic tone rather than a political one.

Charlus Potter was a few years older than him and that fact combined with the fact that he was a Gryffindor meant that Tom had never spoken with him before. He’d known of him but beyond that the only thing he’d noted was the strange likeness he had to Azrael at times.

“Ah, yes, Tom Riddle.” Tom replied focusing on the older boy.

“So, first Slug Club meeting, eh? It’s great that you’re here, you know with you being… Well usually you find only the really old families at this thing, you know?”

It was almost funny, how politically correct Potter was attempting to be. The Potters were known to be one of the more progressive older families, light as it was called in the wizarding world, but even so it was hard to let go of some of those older traditions. Looking at Charlus Potter he couldn’t help but remember that he was engaged to Dorea Black so surely they hadn’t strayed that far from tradition.

Tom smiled at him thinly, “Yes, I had noticed, I guess I’m just special like that.”

“Yeah, still, what do you think of the party?” Potter asked with strained enthusiasm trying to force the conversation.

“It’s alright, very educational, I never knew so many forks could exist for so many different purposes.”

That caused a startled laugh out of Potter, he probably hadn’t expected Tom to have a sense of humor, maybe he’d come over because he’d taken pity as no one else was currently talking to him at the moment. His Slytherin friends had scattered into their own corner without a moment’s thought so Tom must have looked fairly pathetic standing by himself.

“Right, so you’re a fourth year though, Merlin that was a good year. Before the OWLS and the NEWTS set in, ugh, enjoy it while you can Tom.” The Gryffindor mock shuddered at the thought of the horrific tests he was taking and to Tom’s surprised Tom even smiled a bit at it.

“I’ll try.”

If he had left at that moment, or if things had remained as they were, then Tom thought he might have gone back. However as they stood there in companionable silence during the pause, thinking of something to say, Potter brought up a topic he really shouldn’t have.

It was a surprise though, even to Tom himself, because he never imagined that he’d be so sensitive when it came to the Hufflepuff Azrael.

“You’re friends with that weird kid, that Hufflepuff, what’s his name something foreign with an ‘A’…” Potter drifted off searching through the name in his memory.

“Azrael.” Tom supplied for him, his voice sounding flat even to his own ears.

“Yeah, the kid without a wand, or the travelling wand or whatever, Azrael.” Potter exclaimed having located the Hufflepuff in his memory, “What’s he like, I hear he’s a genius at wandless magic but absolutely terrible at everything else.”

To an outside observer this might seem like the case, practical work Azrael had no equal, even Tom’s work was second best to his. Always, without exception this was the case. However he often failed the theoretical work either by refusing to do the assignments claiming they were a waste of his time or quoting muggle physicists and citing them as references rather than any book out of the Hogwarts library.

“You’re just being lazy.” Tom had been telling him for years only for Azrael to brush him off with a wave of his hand, “Laziness is hardly one of my problems.”

Still, for Tom to say these things was fine, Tom knew Azrael but Potter and everyone else didn’t. They barely knew his name, what right did they have to judge the caliber of his work on mere glimpses?

“He’s smarter than people give him credit for, not just with the wandless magic either.” Tom stated with a shrug that was attempting not to look stiff.

“Okay I guess, he’s pretty famous though, you know for a fourth year. He’s pretty… well, you know.” Potter shrugged with a careless smile, as if to fill in the blank with smile, that Azrael was whatever adjective you could fill into that blank.

“No, I don’t know.”

“…Weird.” Again Potter shrugged, “Not that weird is a bad thing, just, there’s a lot of interesting rumors floating about with that kid. I’m sure you’ve heard some of them.”

“No, I haven’t, I think I’d like to hear them.”

Tom knew he sounded like he’d want to hear anything but what Potter wanted to say but in spite of the dullness of his tone and the flat expression in his eyes Potter must have felt assured enough to go on and awkwardly reiterate what the rumor mill had been spouting for years. During the entire time Tom marveled at the failure in his acting ability, where was his cheerful student persona, the face he offered each professor after earning each and every house point. Where was that inherently false smile?

When had insulting Azrael become the same as insulting Tom himself?

When Potter finally finished Tom forced his lips into an attempt at a smile that usually came so easily, “Thanks, Potter, it was good meeting you.”

“Yeah, good meeting you too, Tom. I hope I see you next meeting, it’s nice to see some new faces around here, you know.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”


	7. Chapter 7

Before his fifth year life had seemed monochromatic, there were moments here and there that stood out, but for the most part it was a blur of gray memories. A constant build up to some defining moment he had yet to reach, a moment he had only dimly named for himself, Lord Voldemort and yet he had no idea what shape it would take.

The year came rolling in like a hurricane and it would not stop until the summer had passed.

The first event was the startling and almost horrifying realization that he was attracted to his only friend the Hufflepuff Azrael. He had always found Azrael interesting looking but he would not refer to the boy as particularly attractive. He had very striking features, his eyes, his hair, his pale skin, but his personality and the way he held himself negated any of the overall aesthetics.

Not that he’d paid attention to anyone’s overall aesthetics before but that was neither here nor there. He began to wonder if this was simply another aspect of his personality that separated him from the masses. He could notice and label whether someone was attractive or not but it had no true influence over his decisions or his objectivity. It was simply another category the same as someone being athletic or intelligent, useful in some instances, but only a trait and nothing more.

No, he’d never had a true interest in anyone, man or woman.

Until fifth year that was.

He supposed the first time he really noticed it was the train to Hogwarts. As was their yearly ritual they met in one of the back compartments, this time for just a few minutes before Tom would have to depart for a prefect’s meeting. He’d been sitting by himself impatiently staring out the window at the station when Azrael had walked in.

It was like seeing Azrael and seeing a stranger all in the same instant. For a moment he was two different people, the familiar Azrael he had always known and this stranger who seemed somehow beautiful, and Tom caught himself feeling dazed and his throat dry.

The moment was broken by sound of Azrael’s voice, “Congratulations, Tom, I could not imagine a world in which you are not the prefect.”

Tom didn’t remember what he’d said in response, something distracted, maybe a yes or of course, something that caused Azrael’s thin eyebrows to raise as Tom attempted to gather himself from the aftermath of whatever that was.

Instead he had been trapped in those green eyes, filled equally with light and shadow, pulling Tom in as if they were a world in and of themselves.

He’d find himself thinking of Azrael in odd moments. This in itself wasn’t completely new, Azrael was one of the few people in the school interesting enough to waste a few stray thoughts over. What was new though was his newfound hobby of watching Azrael, the movement of his hands, the slight tilt of his head when he was working on something, not even thinking just watching with an interest he could not explain even to himself. There was something hypnotic in those pale gloved hands; they weaved so many images, magic bled from his fingertips and even by watching Tom felt he could see the colors dancing off of them.

For the most part he’d decided to ignore these instances, he didn’t like them, and if he didn’t act on them then it was almost as if they never happened in the first place. It was distracting and more than a little alarming that his thoughts were so focused on one human being who couldn’t even bring himself to pass History of Magic.

In hindsight, those first few months of his fifth year, Azrael had been worth watching but just not in the way Tom was doing it. Looking back there were signs here and there, a few stray winds from the oncoming storm, which should have been evident if he had even thought to pay attention. That year as the muggle war raged on, as Stalingrad became a graveyard, as labor camps were built across Eastern Europe, his eyes had become very dark. He seemed constantly distracted, but not in his usual distant way, he was bothered by something and could not get it out of his head.

What little effort he placed into classes disappeared almost altogether, practical work was done expertly, but essays and theory were thrown out the window. Years earlier during one of their little practice sessions Azrael had claimed that all magical theory was ‘bullshit’. He claimed that although wizards had been studying the nature of magic for years they were still really just stumbling about in the dark. Magic, he said, was a poor word choice that implied ineffability when it really shouldn’t.

Still, up until his fifth year he had at least done the essays, he had never received good grades often quoting muggles as legitimate resources and writing his own harebrained theories into the essays rather than anything they had actually been taught, but nevertheless he had done them.

By the beginning of fifth year Azrael had already made up his mind to leave Hogwarts.

Of course Tom had seen all of this, but in his own distraction, in his own attempts to avoid just staring at the boy he’d been too distracted to connect the dots. He’d seen it as one of Azrael’s downswings, his bouts of chronic depression brought on by God only knew what, but nothing more than that certainly nothing more lasting. Somehow in his mind he refused to allow Azrael to change, he had to stay as he was, so that Tom could somehow move around him and past him and return to the way things used to be.

Attraction, lust, was a disease. It made the object of affection into a shallow limited thing, reduced them down to their components, until the subtleties were lost entirely. Tom knew the exact color of his eyes, the shape of his hands, the shade of his skin, and the texture of his feathered hair but he could not see the thoughts behind those green glass eyes and he hadn’t even realized it.

* * *

The second event that occurred was his discovery of his heritage.

He felt that he should have realized sooner but given his acquaintanceship with his house mates he wasn’t sure how the topic would have come up. He’d never even told Azrael, had never felt it was a talent worth sharing, it wasn’t as if snakes were particularly interesting conversationalists, and he supposed that was reason enough for the delay. No, it had been quite an accident to learn that Parseltongue was the key to unlocking his ancestry.

He’d been sitting in the library by himself reading in the candle light, flicking through books here and there on the founders on little more than a whim, when he found the chapter on Parseltongue, a language only spoken by Slytherin’s descendants. Suddenly, after years of proving his worth as a mudblood, there it was. Everything that proved his worth, that provided him a place among the elite, given to him in that hissing language he had always understood.

The whole time, every time he had to justify himself, it had all been a lie. He wasn’t like every other mudblood because he wasn’t a mudblood at all, he was as pure as it got, the heir of Slytherin the very founder of English blood purism. He’d remembered laughing, breaking down into hysterics, thinking of himself lording his purity over the Malfoys and the Blacks and all those others who had dared to look down on him when he was never a mudblood to begin with.

His smile and laughter had faded though as he’d realized that Tom Riddle could never be anything but a mudblood if Lord Voldemort was going to exist. Tom Riddle was a penniless orphan and even if he showed his new talent to his elitist friends it would change nothing. He would be a peer, not a master. No, Lord Voldemort had to rise from the ashes of Tom Riddle, that’s how it had to be if he was going to exist at all.

“So, it doesn’t make a difference after all.” He said to himself.

It was then that he began his avid and almost obsessive search for the Chamber of Secrets.

He broke off wandless lessons shortly after his discovery, he’d never learned anything particularly useful from it anyway, he’d learned how to levitate more easily and cast better glamours and other seemingly random skills but certainly nothing as interesting as he’d initially hoped. There were better uses for his time. At least, that’s what he told himself and Azrael when they met to discuss it.

They sat in Azrael’s workshop laid out by the room of requirement, at least he supposed it was the workshop, it lacked the usual mess of gears and screw drivers and other equipment that Azrael usually kept lying around. Everything was neatly packed away giving the room a bare and almost empty look. Sitting on a stool Azrael held his face in his hands, his expression flat and unresponsive, as if he wasn’t in the room at all.

“It’s our fifth year, I have OWLs to study for, not to mention prefect duties, and frankly we don’t have time for this anymore.” Tom finished standing to leave and do one of the said activities if not a few others as well. He’d recently started researching more into the dark arts, that which the Ministry forbid, and while Azrael wasn’t a huge fan of government Tom also felt that he might not be enthused with Tom’s choice in extracurriculars.

He expected an, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Or perhaps an, “It’s for the best.” Or maybe even a “Why?” from Azrael but he received none of those. Instead, after a lengthy weighted silence, Azrael said, “There’s a dark wizard in Germany, you know.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Tom snapped.

“They say he uses blood sacrifices of muggle born children to increase his magical potential.” Azrael continued without inflection as if talking about the weather, “He’s been travelling west, through France, and then maybe across the channel. Who can say? I wonder what war tastes like to a wizard, don’t you, Tom?”

Azrael left pieces of himself, like puzzles, for Tom to find. He left them here and there, scattered through conversations, almost giving them to Tom and wishing him luck as he tried to piece it together. The trouble was Tom did not realize it was a puzzle until Azrael solved it for him, and by then it was far too late.

“I swear, Azrael, your mental illness is getting worse. That wasn’t even a tangent.”

Azrael sighed and stood as well, “You’re right, it’s probably for the best, do whatever it is you think needs to be done.”

Tom nodded and began to walk away, he almost left without another word but without hearing Azrael’s footsteps behind him he turned back. Standing in the room Azrael looked like a stray shadow, like something purely inhuman, a statue dressed in black without expression or thought in him. There was only stillness, only emptiness like the room, until he was the room of requirement. For a moment Tom couldn’t find anything of Azrael in him.

“…No hard feelings, Azrael?” He asked, the Hufflepuff lifted his head and offered Tom a small and somber smile that spoke nothing of any real happiness.

“I have a question, before you go. The Slug Club, you never went back, why not?”

For a moment he wondered what that had to do with anything but he answered it all the same, “I didn’t belong there.”

He expected him to ask for clarification or dig further but all he said was, “Thank you, no hard feelings.”

He rarely saw Azrael after that and instead spent most of his time checking the wallpaper for a snake that might lead him into the famed chamber of secrets.

* * *

When the German dark lord managed to substantiate himself from the level of rumor to fact there’d been a tangible change in atmosphere. Suddenly being in Slytherin seemed to have purpose, politics were a daily discussion and once again Tom found himself being glanced at and used as an example of the mudblood filth that the coming dark lord cleaned from his shoes. Grindelwald, his name was, and if the rumors were to be believed from France he was a plague of death to every city he had come across.

Among the general student population there was a general feeling of unease, this was war, not just a muggle war either but a wizarding war. Suddenly they were thrown into the conflict and had to think on possibilities of invasion and battle, should the German muggles have invaded there would be no problem, but the German wizards were a different tale.

The faculty was not immune either, he could see the looks of unease that passed between them. Dumbledore seemed particularly distant, distracted, so that even in class sometimes he would be caught staring out the window towards France where the dark lord edged steadily closer.

As usual Azrael was the only one who deviated from the pattern as news progressed he did not panic or gloat but rather seemed to grow flat. It seemed as if gravity near him grew more intense so that everything became weighted, his eyes seemed dulled, and it always looked as if he was lost somewhere in his own head working at a puzzle that was caught inside it.

Tom decided to prepare in the way he prepared for all confrontations, by being crueler and more lethal than his enemy, and if his enemy was going to be a dark lord then he would have to be nastier than a dark lord. It was his legacy after all, to look into the dark arts, his ancient ancestor Salazar Slytherin would be so very proud.

Tom Riddle might be a mudblood but should the German wizards invade and find him they’d be facing Lord Voldemort who was anything but.

It was in this frame of mind in December of 1942 that Azrael approached him for one final conversation as a Hogwarts student. Break was steadily approaching and with it the onslaught of snow. In spite of the tense atmosphere brought with the news of a dark lord students were talking avidly of spending the holidays with their families and the gifts they might receive, as if all their previous fears had been set aside, sure the German wizard was still lurking here and there in conversations but he wasn’t the forefront. He was still in France after all, and there was a channel and appararition wards between there and England, there was still plenty of time.

Tom was once again hunting for the entrance, this time with eyes trained on the ceilings of the hallways, keeping an eye out for any snakes that might appear. He’d looked almost everywhere he could think of and had attempted basic scrying but he was not out of options quite yet, there was always research into the more specific and dangerous methods of divination. Staring up at the ceiling he almost didn’t see Azrael at all.

Azrael’s back was to the hallway, thin hunched black shoulders stood against Tom as the he stared out the window at the thickly falling flakes, and he didn’t speak either seeming content to let Tom pass him by. In spite of his seeming indifference Tom knew that Azrael had appeared to talk to him, in his five years he had never seen Azrael in the hallways unless there was a reason for it.

So Tom paused in his search and waited for Azrael to turn towards him but the boy never did. He had grown taller in the past summer, so that he was almost as tall as Tom was, and somehow Tom found that the term boy no longer fit him but neither did man, as always Azrael was drifting from standard vocabulary.

It had been a while since he and Azrael had truly spoken, Tom had been avoiding him, it had seemed easier that way than to deal with the red cheeks and the stuttering heart beat that accompanied Azrael’s presence. Oh sure, they sat together in the classes they shared. Transfiguration, Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Charms and that cursed course known as Divination he would be right there sitting next to him his quill tapping some erratic rhythm on the table with a glazed look in his eyes that screamed of abject boredom. Tom was always painfully aware of him then, each tap of that quill like a gun shot, and somehow all thought of conversation flew out of his head. What was there to say?

Even now, staring only at his back, Tom couldn’t help but notice the thin curve of his shoulder blades in the black robes and the pale shade of his neck. Like a bird, he looked like a bird that had drifted into human form.

“Azrael?” His voice sounded hoarse in his ears, as if he hadn’t used it for quite some time, but he didn’t want to clear it as if that was admitting some weakness.

Slowly Azrael turned from the window, and his expression was one of those that Tom had always been wary of, blank devoid of thought holding only that terrible power and inhuman beauty.

“You didn’t return to the Slug Club.” He stated without preamble, without any inflection, an observation and yet even so Tom noted that this observation seemed strangely heavy.

“Yes.” Tom affirmed his eyebrows raising even as he said it wondering if Azrael was feeling a bit off. He wanted to ask if this, Tom’s abandonment of the Slug Club, was what was bothering him.

When Tom had returned from the initial Slug Club meeting Azrael had seemed a bit different, distant but a forced awkward distance, as if instead of drifting from Hogwarts he was stepping back from it almost sheepishly. The way he acted, the bizarre nervousness that he’d never seen in Azrael, it made it seem as if Azrael didn’t expect him to come back from the Slug Club at all. As if he’d somehow walk in there and… change.

Azrael had seemed rather surprised at the lack of companionship between Tom and his housemates, he kept looking at Malfoy, the Blacks, the Lestrange heir as if he fully expected Tom to be wandering off and chatting it up with the future lords of the most noble and ancient houses. When Tom threw out the next Slug Club invitation with a slight sneer of disgust he looked even more baffled. There was some metamorphosis, some critical moment of transformation he had been expecting, and it hadn’t happened.

They’d never really discussed it and as time wore on and their fifth year approached Azrael appeared to let it drop but every once in a while, staring at Tom, he’d get that pensive expression that saved for late nights tinkering with his metallic inventions.

There was a smile then, a brighter smile than he had seen from Azrael in a long time. Azrael walked from the window, with that same awkwardness that had appeared after that first Slug Club meeting, and clasped Tom’s hand.

His hands were strangely cool, even beneath the dark wrappings, and Tom hoped that his face wasn’t turning red, “What are you doing?”

Azrael probably couldn’t see either way, his eyes were trained on their joined hands, with a softness that had not been there since that first moment on the roof all those years ago.

“I… I wanted to thank you, Tom, for everything. For a long time I thought that I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t touch anything here, that I just had to sit and watch everything unfold again but…” He trailed off and then looked Tom directly in the eyes. There was a fire in those green eyes of his, a bright determination that had not been there before, “You didn’t go back to the Slug Club, not once, and so I realized that things can change and that I am not… I am not impotent Tom, the universe is not written, and we can be Schrödinger’s cat for as long as we wish. We are all our possibilities, in every moment, regardless of someone opening or closing a box. So I wanted, no, needed to thank you for that Tom.”

He was still so unreachable, a burning distant star gleaming in the horizon, but his light extended further until Tom felt that he could almost touch him. So he couldn’t say something cutting as he usually did, some jagged harsh turn of phrase that was meant to make Azrael bleed a little, he could only say, “… You’re welcome.” Without understanding why it needed to be said in the first place.

It was Azrael’s way of saying goodbye.

They stood there awkwardly for a few more moments, waiting for the other to say something, anything but neither did. Finally Tom removed his hand from Azraels and said distractedly, “I have things to do, I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

He walked away then not waiting for Azrael’s response, most likely there hadn’t been one at all, just Azrael staring at the retreating Tom Riddle with that peculiar unreadable expression that belonged solely to him.

The next day he simply thought that Azrael was skipping class for some unknown reason, by the end of the week he’d wondered if for the first time in five years Azrael had fallen ill, but by the week after it was evident to all parties that Azrael was no longer in Hogwarts at all.


	8. Chapter 8

There was a dead rat at his feet. It had had the misfortune of wandering into the dungeons and from there into Tom’s room, it had scurried here and there unaware of Tom’s presence, and Tom had watched its scurrying feet and twitching nose. Lying on the bed cold blue eyes dissected it, just as easily as they had once Billy’s little bunny, and it was almost without thought that he reached onto the nightstand grabbed his wand and said two blank words.

So now there was a dead rat on his floor and he was feeling strangely empty as he stared at its glassy eyed corpse. His only thought was to hide the evidence so that even the most powerful of revealing charms would not show _Avada_ _Kedavera_ hiding in the myriad of spells he had used throughout the day.

He knew that no one would check though; as unforgivable as the Unforgivables were no one would miss a rat in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was not his most violent act since Azrael’s sudden disappearance. After a few weeks when it became clear that Azrael was not simply hiding in some unknown region of Hogwarts Tom had gone into the Room of Requirements, into Azrael’s workshop, and had burned everything in sight. He had stood there, watching the metal gears twist and melt to form decrepit liquid statues and the wooden desk fall to splinters. In the center of the flames he had imagined Azrael himself, no expression on his face, and his green eyes boring back into Tom’s.

There was something about the Unforgivables though.

He’d once had a conversation with Azrael on the subject. They had been fourteen at the time, only then entering what Tom considered to be the interesting topics in Defense Against the Dark Arts. He’d always been intrigued by the dark arts, by that which made the ministry turn and shudder, and chief among them were the three curses for which a wizard or witch could not be forgiven.

“I wouldn’t pay those categories too much mind, Tom” Azrael had said as they were walking out of the room.

The lecture that day had been on the Unforgivables, a brief and entirely insufficient description of each, a description of what awaited wizards and witches who dared to use them as well as some other pointless nattering. It had been thoroughly disappointing but Tom had never the less been interested.

“What are you talking about?” Tom had replied, almost by instinct at this point, but Azrael didn’t rise to the bait rather he continued speaking knowing that Tom was following the context with no real problems.

“Despicable, perhaps, most definitely for the first two but tell me, why the third?” Azrael mused before continuing, “Do you know what the killing curse was originally designed for, Tom?”

Power, he’d wanted to reply, to feel like death himself where nothing in the world could stop you and the pitiful people before you could only beg.

“It was designed for efficiency. To kill without mistake, without maiming, an instant painless death when death is the only option left to you. The intent needed to do it, consider that the safety, you cannot use it unless you truly mean it. That is why wizards consider it so terrifying, because its only use is death, there is no fooling yourself to believe it has some other purpose. The killing curse leaves no room for hypocrisy, for self-doubt, and wizards hate that.”

“I think they find it terrifying because it kills them.” Tom noted drily to which Azrael smiled slightly.

“Perhaps, consider Azkaban though, Tom. Tell me, the slow painful death of having your soul and will sucked from your body, to sit shivering in shackles as you feel every bright moment of your life fading into an abyss, how is that not considered unforgivable?”

Tom had never been one for morality, he’d always known that he lacked something that seemed so integral to others, he had never seen a use for it. Billy Stubb’s rabbit had been more useful lynched then it ever had alive and yet they had looked at him like he was the very devil after it. He’d never considered Azrael as being particularly good or bad, light or dark, it always seemed as if these standards could never touch him.

“Humans are capable of despicable, perhaps even unforgivable, acts; more than most people can even imagine or recognize, but the killing curse is not one of them.”

And yet here it was, this dead rat lying on his floor with eyes staring at the ceiling without even an expression of fear as the green light had been too fast to register fully. With a flick of his wand and a muttered word the rat burst into flames on his carpet; a small funeral pyre that befitted the most noble of vermin.

He had wondered if he was truly capable of it, he had hurt yes, he had hurt with the intentions that it be painful but he had never killed. Now though, after having finally done it, he was stretched thin at having to feel anything at all.

“So, this is what it is like to be Lord Voldemort.”

* * *

By Christmas break he came to the unshakable conclusion that Azrael was well and truly gone.

It had been a few weeks by that point and in those weeks the Hufflepuff had never once reappeared. There was vague interest in his disappearance; it came up on the sides of conversations, sandwiched in between Grindlewald, mudbloodism, and obnoxious flirting on the parts of some of the girls in his class.

That had been a change; he hadn’t realized how intimidating people found Azrael. He had this wild fey look about him so that when you stared in his eyes you had this alarming thought that he wasn’t quite human. Tom had grown used to it over the years and lately he had found it strangely captivating.

Apparently it was only Tom who felt that way because as soon as Azrael’s disappearance at his side solidified in the general populace’s mind the girls began to swarm like locusts.

Minerva McGonagall, Gryffindor prefect, emulating all that was brave and rule abiding was the first to approach him. He saw her at the usual prefect meetings and he’d done a few projects with her in his first two years, back when he had pretended that Azrael didn’t exist, and he considered himself to be on vaguely good terms with her considering he was an evil racist Slytherin and she was a noble pure hearted Gryffindor.

“Hello Tom,” She said in a stiff voice that spoke volumes about her nervousness approaching him. He’d been sitting in the library, a book in hand but staring out the window instead, attempting to focus but that gnawing anxiety about Azrael’s disappearance was distracting him. He’d been going through periods of anxiety, rage, overwhelming loneliness, and desperation he couldn’t quite explain even to himself. It left him at most times unable to read and sometimes unable to think so that all he could do was sit there and stare ahead as if captivated by the scenery.

At the end he was left feeling empty, as if all his emotions had been poured out of him. In that short time he had gone further and faster into the dark arts than he had intended sometimes imagining that it was Azrael rather than rats beneath the wand. While these acts of gratuitous violence seemed to calm him down, brought a sickly sweet almost relieved smile to his face, the acts felt like little more than dust floating in the air that might someday find its way beneath Azrael’s feet. He could see him when he closed his eyes, that expression of pure indifference, and those bright green eyes whose color Tom now knew matched the killing curse.

He turned from the window with raised eyebrows, being in the back corner of the library McGonagall would have had to go quite out of her way to reach him. Azrael had once suggested they set up a betting pool for Hogwarts Quidditch, formalize it and run it in such a way that Tom and him could make something of a profit. Nothing had ever come of it. He had that the idea of earning money was more for his benefit than for Azrael’s, and after fifth year they had both become busy and then…

Still, those had only been idle discussions between him and Azrael in Divination when they had gotten bored of staring into murky balls of glass. They were nothing to take seriously, and though Minerva McGonagall had a passion for Quidditch that was almost inspiring even she would not be so offended by idle chat of gambling.

“Hello, Minerva, how may I help you this fine day?”

Tom was then to bear witnessed to the stiffest and possibly most awkward round of flirting he’d ever seen. Eventually she had scurried out of the library looking quite red leaving Tom to blink and stare after her. “Well, that was decidedly weird.”

She was to be the first of many. At first it was almost flattering; certainly distracting from his growing depression over the weeks approaching Christmas, but then it began to grate on his nerves. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these red faced, twittering, girls was that they each at some point brought up Azrael and the fact that he was not present. It was as if he was a piece of news worthy only of small talk, on par with the weather or his plans for the holidays, something to be said with quick polite smile and false interest.

So they did notice his absence, even if it made them somewhat relieved, even if it somehow unconsciously gave them permission to descend on Tom like ravenous territorial wolves. They weren’t completely blind to the fact that he was simply gone.

Amongst the faculty there seemed to be an undercurrent of what seemed almost to be relief, certainly the Divinations professor was breathing easier, and whenever their eyes slid to that empty seat next to Tom their smiles would grow slightly.

“Well, Tom, Mr. Azrael was always a bit…”

On the day before break had started he had met with Slughorn in his office, he hadn’t talked to Slughorn often after having rejected the Slug Club offers, it had been too awkward and there had no longer been a reason to.

He didn’t know what he had expected when he had asked to speak to his head of house, Azrael was a Hufflepuff not even a Slytherin, but perhaps a sliver of hope still burned inside him for the wizarding world. Perhaps he expected that even for Azrael, someone that no one had appeared to like who was the running gag of the school on days he remembered at all, there would be at least some concern for his rapid disappearance.

Tom said nothing, merely gripped his robes with white knuckles and stared straight ahead at Slughorn without any expression on his face.

“Well, let’s just say he wasn’t like you Tom.” Slughorn finished with a shake of his head, “It does happen you know, from time to time, some children simply aren’t cut out for Hogwarts. He always had trouble here, in this school, ever since the beginning and fifth year is a very hard year for students. I hate to say it Tom because I know he was your friend, but perhaps the pressure of OWLs was simply too great.”

It was so very clear in that last sentence alone that Slughorn had never known Azrael at all.

He remembered thinking at the time that he wasn’t really talking to Slughorn but instead was talking to Dippet at the end of his third year, at the verge of begging as London was being riddled with bombs, and that cheerful false understanding smile cast back at him, ‘I’m sorry Tom but it’s for the best you see…’

“I see.” Tom said softly, and he imagined that if he could stare in a mirror his eyes would be as hard as flint.

Slughorn managed to look sympathetic there, his bushy eyebrows softening slightly, “I know it’s hard, and we have looked for him, but I’m afraid he’s just not here. Perhaps, Tom, this is an opportunity to make some new friends. Come back to the Slug Club, we’d be glad to have you again.”

Later he’d consider that meeting, consider his peers, and wonder for what purpose would Lord Voldemort exist? Why rule these petty, shallow, pampered people who knew nothing of death or fear or hatred? It would be like ruling a kingdom of sheep, incapable of little more than being guarded by dogs and eaten by wolves. What were these people, this nation, worth in the end?

He knew somehow that just as he could never touch Azrael these people would never manage to touch him, even if he beat it into them, if he shone brighter than the sun they would still be the same because that’s what humans were and wizards were pathetically and terribly human at the end of the day.

In those years in the orphanage, before there had been others, when there had just been Tom he had vowed to himself that he would rise above them all as he was clearly meant to. In the blinding promise of the wizarding world he had forgotten what he truly was, nothing had changed since before that meeting with Albus Dumbledore, nothing at all.

“I’ll burn it, I’ll burn it all until there’s nothing left of these people, only things that deserve to live should live. Mudblood, pureblood, wizard, muggle, Lord Voldemort will see to all of them.”

* * *

He sometimes dreamed about Azrael, as the winter passed his mind would wander and he’d catch glimpses of feathered hair or green eyes. In the corridor of his dreams the Hufflepuff was everywhere.

Everything seemed softer in these dreams, the scenery faded and filled with light, and Azrael somehow within reach. He always smiled there, the genuine smile he rarely wore, and in his eyes there was only Tom and nothing else.

It was a shadow of his memory, even in the dreams Tom knew that, and he would wake up with tired eyes and wonder why his mind held so desperately to such images. Azrael had left without a word, without a glance behind, back into the abyss he had come from so why was he still so present in Tom’s mind?

Behind the search for the Chamber of Secrets there now rested Azrael, who had once assured him of its existence, somehow even though he knew it was irrational Tom expected to find the Hufflepuff there as much as he would expect to find the Minotaur in the labyrinth.

He was tired, that was the truth of the matter. He’d lost his faith in wizards, in humanity really, and that left him feeling worn. Lord Voldemort’s vibrant promise still beat inside his head but it seemed so hollow, so empty, when juxtaposed with the realities of magical Britain and the wizards that infested it.

Would he have even noticed, he wondered, if he had not taken that gloved hand up to the roof three years before? Azrael burned so brightly, so that when he was gone Tom could not help but turn and see how dim the promise of the wizarding world truly was.

Somehow he doubted it, he had been a different Tom then all things considered, he had always risen above his peers but it had been so easy to see what he had wanted. An escape from muggle mediocrity, not realizing that it was simply humanity that was the wretchedness, being a muggle only meant they lacked the magic to make it glitter.

No, now he found his vision had to change, to change with Tom so that it was only him standing above all of them once again. To recognize that there were no real differences between muggles and wizards. In the end they were more or less the same as little Billy’s bunny. It was just hard sometimes, to let go of something as profound and tender as an unrealized vision.

If he owned any photographs of Azrael he would have burned them at that point just for forcing him to let go of his own illusions.

One dream he had was different than the others, it was starker, and it carried the weight of reality with it.

He was somewhere very cold and white, the buildings were stark and many appeared to be in ill repair, in the distance he could hear the firing of guns and the shouting of men. Across from him, on one of the buildings, leaned the familiar Azrael with an expression that had a tenderness he rarely saw from the Hufflepuff.

“Hello, Tom. You must be quite distressed if your occlumency barriers are low enough that you wandered here.” He didn’t move forward, but rather remained leaning against the building. He looked tired, there were dark circles beneath his eyes, but even so he seemed more alive than Tom remembered. That burning determination he had seen in his eyes, during their last conversation, had not extinguished itself but appeared to have merely grown brighter.

“Azrael?” Tom asked stepping toward him. Azrael nodded but didn’t say anything even when Tom stopped in front of him, close enough to touch him but not quite managing.

They stood there in silence, Tom just standing and taking in the sight of him, thin and pale and looking so very adult in this dreamed wasteland.

Finally the rage took over, “How could you? How could you just leave?”

His hand darted out before he could stop it, he punched Azrael in the face, and watched not without satisfaction as Azrael’s nose crunched in on itself and began to bleed. Stooped over they both waited as the blood seeped from his face, but soon enough with a silent twitch of his hand the nose was back in its original position as if nothing had happened and the blood was gone. He stood up, his expression containing both worry and bafflement, “Has anyone missed me?”

It was like being slapped in the face by Mrs. Cole, some part of him had seen it coming but it still stung and he was left standing dumbfounded in its wake. He had often wondered how Azrael pictured him, but they had been idle thoughts, he had known there had been expectations but he had never truly questioned what Azrael saw when he looked at Tom. It must have been terribly shallow, whatever this thing was that Azrael saw in his place, nothing more than any of the other wizards just pretending to be superior.

Attraction was a disease, because even then, even with Azrael casually tossing Tom’s feelings, affection he had never had for anyone before, away as if it was nothing he still looked so very beautiful.

Tom stepped forward and placed his hands on Azrael’s shoulders, as if to ground him and keep him from drifting. Azrael didn’t flinch but he did stiffen beneath Tom’s fingers and held very still as Tom’s rested his forehead against Azrael’s.

(Just stay, don’t say anything, just stay. That’s all you have to do.)

“I am very tired.” Tom stated, his lips cracking into a wry smile, and he wondered if these out of context words made him sound like Azrael. “Where are we?”

“Stalingrad.”  Azrael said one of his gloved hands tentatively reaching up to Tom’s on his shoulders, “The Stalingrad that exists in my head when I’m dreaming.”

“A charming vacation spot, I’m sure.” He let out a sort of breathless chuckle but other than the shaking of his chest and shoulders he did not move, kept Azrael pinned against the wall, he felt so very tired even in a dream.

They listened to the gun-shots for a few moments, to those distant cries of pain, and the whisper of the wind that wound its way through the empty buildings. Finally with a sigh Tom lifted his head and stared at Azrael and allowed his emotions to settle into place.

“Why did you go?”

Azrael removed Tom’s hands from his shoulders and held them in his own, like he had on that day before he left, “Why do you work so hard to transcend what was given to you, Tom? There were things that needed to be done, I had wasted enough time already, I just hadn’t realized it at the time.”

“What things require throwing out your education?” This was harsher, the anger and frustration returning, as he stared at his stubbornly unflappable friend.

“I never learned anything at Hogwarts, I think you know that, I never belonged there.” He stopped for a moment a smile that was almost purely bitter gracing his lips before shaking his head and continuing, “You know, I think the only reason I stayed so long in the first place was because of you.”

Tom realized then, that Azrael was his most cutting in his kindness, his more dangerous moods had never left Tom feeling as wrecked as he did now. He just wanted to laugh, to let those fatigued almost mad chuckles escape him, even though nothing seemed funny at all.

“You knew the whole time, didn’t you?” He asked a wry smile growing on his face, one that matched Azrael’s without even trying.

“Knew what?”

“Wizards are just pampered over powered muggles, running in the halls with knives hoping they won’t trip and tear themselves to pieces.”

Azrael just stared at him, his own smile fading, but his eyes still burning never leaving Tom’s face. Finally, in a solemn tone that matched the sound of the distant gunshots and cries of pain, “I never claimed they were not human, Tom. Do you remember what I told you, before I left?”

He felt that if he searched the halls of his memory hard enough he could find every word Azrael had ever spoken burned into the walls.

“Some poetic nonsense, I’m sure.” He replied instead but with a shaking smile that gave away the lie.

“We are all our possibilities. Do what you must, Tom. Just remember that you can transcend even yourself at the end of the day.”

And with that they were gone and Tom was waking to the sight of his dorm room ceiling.


	9. Chapter 9

As with most things in Tom’s life the discovery of the Chamber of Secrets was a thing of chance rather than talent or even persistence. Had things progressed as they did before serendipity he most likely would not have found the entrance and the ensuing events would not have occurred. He didn’t know what that reality would resemble, whether he would have been greatly changed, but the fact remained that it was a whim of the universe that allowed him to descend beneath the castle and little else.

Moaning Myrtle Stewart, over her five year career at Hogwarts, had gained a reputation of being a waste of space who served no purpose to the greater reality. Once she exited Hogwarts it was fully expected that she’d disappear into mediocrity perhaps becoming a secretary at the ministry or a clerk in some store but progressing little further than that. Unfortunately Myrtle was beginning to realize this state of affairs, being daily reminded by Olive Hornby at the fact that she was talentless, ugly, and altogether quite boring, and had returned to her first year haunt of sobbing in the bathroom near the dungeons.

February of 1943, two months since Azrael’s disappearance, Tom was still feeling out of sorts and disconnected from the greater wizarding world. It seemed that the search for the Chamber of Secrets and a vague desire to score well on his exams were all that drove him, everything else simply seemed gray. So while he performed his prefect duties it was without enthusiasm and often times a thin disguise for searching for the chamber while on patrol. It was these very prefect duties though, patrolling the corridors late at night, that lead him to routinely pass by Moaning Myrtle’s wails whenever making his way through the dungeons. His tolerance of other students had always been rather short, it had only gotten worse since Azrael’s disappearance, so it was almost a given that he would eventually snap and confront the girl even if she was hiding in the lavatory. 

He’d entered the girl’s bathroom without hesitation speaking both to his growing depression and his hatred of her voice which always managed to sound like nails on a black board and had marched over to the closed stall where the sounds were coming from and addressed it, “Stewart, I realize that I’m encroaching on your territory but it is very late and one wouldn’t want you to miss curfew now would they?”

There was a slight shriek and the door opened to reveal a puffy faced Myrtle Stewart sniffling across at him. Thankfully, in Tom’s recent slew of admirers, Moaning Myrtle had not been one to approach him with batting eye lashes and blushing cheeks.

He’d recently had to go through the horror that was Valentine’s Day without the benefit of having Azrael’s otherworldy insane babble scaring off the mob. There’d been a few letters over the years, some chocolates, but they had been small underwhelming things that he’d mostly ignored. In the last two years Azrael had always raised his eyebrows and smiled a bit at the sight of them, as if he found the very idea that these girls would get him chocolates was amusing, but Tom had never spent any real thought on them. As he’d suspected since his growing popularity in December this Valentine’s Day had proved to be somewhat different and that much worse than every other one thus far. There had been colored notes, singing dwarves dressed as cupid, flowers, piles of chocolate some of which smelled disturbingly good (perhaps laced with some potion) and the random miscellaneous items. He’d lost track of who sent what but he’d feel that he’d remember something as awful as a letter from Myrtle so he felt fairly confident in saying that she was either uninterested or too intimidated to show any affection and Tom was very grateful.

However that was as far as the gratitude extended, it did not extend to the middle of the night listening to her wail on a daily basis.

“Tom, what… this is the girl’s room.” She said as if he was unaware of that fact and that it was somehow sacred.

Tom sighed and began to rub at his sinuses feeling a headache mounting and he wondered why he had been so eager to be a prefect. It seemed that in his haste to be seen as great he had mistaken petty responsibility for something that was actually important. It seemed he’d made quite a few mistakes like that in recent years and he wasn’t sure why it wasn’t until now that he could see them it was as if Azrael’s absence highlighted things until unspoken truths could no longer be ignored, “Yes, this is the girl’s room, but it’s also ten minutes until you are expected back in your dorm and I would hate to give you a detention for loitering, now wouldn’t I?”

She seemed to get the idea because with an embarrassed sniffling shuffle she moved past him and out of the bathroom, “I… Right… Sorry… I’ll just be…” And then she was gone out the door and moaning her way towards the Ravenclaw tower where she belonged.

It would be much easier, Tom thought to himself, if she went and cried in her own Ravenclaw bathroom but that most likely defeated the purpose of avoiding her tormentor Olive Hornby.  

He was left then, staring after her, in the girl’s bathroom in the dungeons wondering if he had the energy to continue patrolling or if he should risk simply leaving and heading back to bed and getting some sleep. He was always tired in those recent months. In his head the winds of Stalingrad were blowing, as they had since that dream in December where Azrael’s eyes had almost burned, and sometimes it seemed best to simply stand still and let them howl.

It was in the corner of his eye that he spotted it, almost walking past it altogether, a thing that did not fit; a single serpent’s head in the form of a faucet. He walked toward the sink almost reverently, as if knowing before speaking that this was the only true grail among all other pretenders and that finally he might find his way to the sorting hat’s promise and from there to Lord Voldemort himself.

_“Open.”_

* * *

It was an oubliette in every sense of the word, a little place of forgetting, a forgotten realm where things were left to pass undisturbed into eternity. Somehow in spite of Slytherin’s reputation and his documented desire to pass on his legacy Tom suspected that he was the only heir of Slytherin to pass through these caverns in a very long time if there had been any others at all.

This was the void, the endless emptiness, this was what the end looked like after it had already passed.

The walls were lined in grime and the floor covered in rubble and what appeared to be the skulls of unknown beings. It was like entering another world, a dark path that lead ever closer to the center of the labyrinth, leaving Tom to breathe heavy the scent of damp and dark and secrets left undisclosed until they festered.

This was his legacy, this was his ancestry, and the bones snapping beneath his shoes only seemed to emphasize that fact.

This is all that you are and ever shall be, the room seemed to scream at him.

Eventually he made his way to what looked like the central chamber. A stone walkway covered in algae and moss was laid out in the center over a still lake lined by green torches forever glowing like light preserved in a photograph, nothing real or lasting, leading eventually to the carved bearded face of Salazar Slytherin staring back at him with cold dead eyes.

“Disappointed?” Tom could help but ask but the statue did not respond only stared back.

So, he thought to himself, this is the Chamber of Secrets where the World Snake sleeps according to the Hufflepuff Azrael and where Slytherin kept his most powerful secrets according to the Slytherins.

Greatness, the hat had said, and somehow Tom felt that it had meant this moment of standing in the ruins of his ancestor’s work staring into those flat eroded stone eyes searching for some meaning.

What was it that Azrael had said about greatness? Something about the sardonic and mythos, it had been one his lengthier rambles. He felt somehow, that whatever Azrael had said that day in Divination, with flat eyes and a grim expression over tea had been far more fitting than words professed by a charmed hat.

He felt, then, that if he stood there for too long he’d find himself sinking into the depths of philosophy a place he had never been quite willing to follow Azrael to even in the best of times.

Without much pause Tom continued forward commanding the statue to step aside with a single, _“Open”_ in the language of snakes and descended further into the dark.

* * *

A conversation with Jörmungadr, the basilisk sleeping beneath Hogwarts.

It was curled eyes closed but head turned towards him, a single word from his lips and it had subdued its will to eat, some half-forgotten magic binding it to the will of Slytherin but even so there was still something of the World Snake in its skin something dangerous and not to be trifled with. What a power rush it must have been for the exiled founder, to command a basilisk.

It brought him back to his days before Hogwarts, back when he had been something special and beyond human comprehension, when a thought was all he had needed to shatter bones and open wounds on frightened children. There had always been such a rush then, not a sense of purpose, but a mad terrible rush of power. Those days were so distant from him now, so alien, that he wasn’t entirely sure he had the ability to comprehend them only to vaguely remember.

What had Slytherin intended, he wondered, with this basilisk he kept caged and starving down here in the Chamber of Secrets? How did he imagine this meeting of his heir and the beast would go? That was the true secret, if there ever was one.

_“Do you have a name?”_ He asked it, the snake’s head twitched towards him the body shifting slightly.

_“Names are human thingssss….”_ So even snakes paraphrased Azrael at the end of the day, how had he expected anything less? The more Tom thought about it the more he found that names were human things, made important only superficially, and yet even when he thought distantly like that Lord Voldemort was so much brighter than Tom ever could be.

He moved onto the next question with an unintentional wry and tender smile brought on by the thought of eyes the color of death.

_“Your creator, the wizard who placed your egg beneath the toad, did he tell you why you are here?”_

_“Kill the mudbloodsss…”_ There was no hesitation, no skipping of a beat on the part of a snake, the words themselves were imbued with a passion that was almost sentient, almost human, but not quite.

For an odd moment Tom thought to himself in the form of a joke, I wish I had such ease finding my purpose. How had Slytherin managed that, that central point of focus in a basilisk, did he sit beside it in the dark cavern and say, “This is your purpose, this is why you exist my child.” It would be absurd if it weren’t so terribly pathetic.

_“Tell me, do you know what mudbloods are?”_  He asked the king of serpents causing the snake to pause, perhaps to struggle against its bindings as it tried to catch at Tom’s meaning, but that magic was old and ancient and in the end even a basilisk is only a snake.

_“Filth, disease, vermin…”_

He had wondered if even Salazar Slytherin had been able to divine a way to tell the difference between a mudblood and a pure wizard. Though he himself was no longer quite mudblood, with Parseltongue as his witness there was a wizard loitering in his family somewhere, Tom Riddle would always be a mudblood as he’d thought because in the end mudbloodism wasn’t really about the blood.

They were each as human as they had hoped and feared at the end of the day, that was the truth of it.

Still, there was really only one way to tell.

_“Interesting, I’d like to propose an experiment.”_

At the end of things these words did not destroy Hogwarts as he thought they might and they did not cause anarchy and destruction among the wizarding elite either. On the whole they only touched the lives of a few students but even so in the words of his friend Azrael, _“Great things are often quite terrible.”_

In the end there really was no other way to reach his destiny.

* * *

These were the words the young and desperate Tom Riddle wrote on Hogwart’s walls in roosters’ blood when thinking of a glittering world he had only dreamed existed and a young man with eyes the color of death.

_“We are the hollow men_

_We are the stuffed men_

_Leaning together_

_Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!_

_Our dried voices, when_

_We whisper together_

_Are quiet and meaningless_

_As wind in dry grass_

_Or rats' feet over broken glass_

_In our dry cellar_

_Shape without form, shade without colour,_

_Paralysed force, gesture without motion;_

_Those who have crossed_

_With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom_

_Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost_

_Violent souls, but only_

_As the hollow men_

_The stuffed men.”_

And thus the Chamber of Secrets was opened, the poem left unfinished dripping on the walls, speaking of things that had yet to come.


	10. Chapter 10

The night he decided to vandalize and write poetry on the walls he found himself in his room afterwards flipping through his diary with a feeling that, if stronger, might have been nostalgia. He’d started the diary when he’d realized that there was a name for what he was, wizard, it was a leather bound book that had been discounted in Diagon Alley. Cheap without any magical properties but slim and elegant nonetheless. It had seemed in that moment as if it had been meant for him all along.

He’d been quite prolific if not profound in the beginning, notes on his peers, on the wizarding world, and his own desire for greatness littered the notebook. Gradually it changed though, he’d began writing less and less, only a few words here or there out of context on any given date and sometimes nothing for months on end. Only the important events were listed, his confrontation with Dippet, his adventures at the Slug Club, the birth of Voldemort’s vision, and at the very end Azrael’s disappearance into the wider world.

Looking back it seemed most of the diary was written on the subject of the Hufflepuff Azrael, but he supposed that was only fair, after all the Hufflepuff Azrael had been one of the true hallmarks of Hogwarts.

Funny, that now that he felt he had learned enough to portray truth about the world he had no desire to write any of that down. It was a thing that Tom couldn’t write, even to himself, he couldn’t destroy the hopes that had been poured into that notebook so freely even if they had been so terribly unfounded. 

Azrael had always struck him as a closet poet, he spoke nonsensically enough to be one, but to his surprise when he’d asked Azrael had said that he wasn’t much of a writer poetry or otherwise. “My thoughts,” he’d said at one point with a thin but nostalgic smile, “are either too large or too small to fit on paper and when I look at them I can only see the shadows of what they were in my head. If I speak them then they are ephemeral, to be written is far too static at the end of things, even if the paper does erode into nothingness.”

Similarly Tom’s own thoughts and musings now seemed alien to journaling, belonging in his head and not on paper, and so he could not bring himself to write another entry. Besides, it seemed as if Azrael’s leaving was as good a place to end as any.                          

The diary may have been done but the journal still served a purpose with the myriad of pages that remained. Tom flipped to the first empty page available and in black curling letters wrote the following title. 

_“The Hogwarts Basilisk Experiment”_

* * *

The Hogwarts Basilisk Experiment

Abstract: The following details the chronological records, impressions, and various events of the Hogwarts Basilisk Experiment from February 18, 1943 until its completion. The experiment itself is social, rather than purely scientific, in nature and deals with the reactions of a tight knit community to an unknown source of terror as well as a rapid and unexplained increase in death. The conclusions drawn here can be applied to human nature in general but perhaps more specifically to similar communities who are both extremely superstitious and romantic (believing man to be the pinnacle of achievement) all in the same instant.

Rules of Interaction on the part of the Experimenter:

  * Unless asked by a participant the experimenter will not comment on any events transpiring from the experiment.
  * The conclusive end of the experiment will be marked by the finding of a cause by the general community, true or false.
  * Until an end is reach the experiment will continue regardless of the consequences to participants.



A complete list of the petrified and dead can be found in the appendix.

* * *

He could hear it in the pipes if he listened hard enough, a cold slithering and sometimes the words, _“kill”_ and _“mudblood”_ echoing through the walls. His instructions to the basilisk had been simple enough, it was not to leave the castle, and it was to travel within the pipes remaining out of sight, but otherwise it had free reign to kill as many mudbloods as it pleased provided it could tell which were the mudbloods and which were not.

For a week it appeared as if nothing had happened, several students had been given detention and had tried and failed to remove the blood stained words from the wall, and it seemed as if it was nothing more than a case of bizarre and rather morbid vandalism. There were discussions of who had done it but Tom’s name had never risen among the ranks, no one appeared to recognize the poem or those who did said nothing about it, there was however a brief thought that perhaps the missing Azrael was responsible and that had been a jarring thing to hear. Tom had thought of the words and him in the same moment but to hear his name so casually again, the thought that Tom had somehow brought back his presence, it was a little alarming.

In some ways they were more his words than they were Tom’s or even Mr. Eliot’s.

The first incident was not a death as Tom thought it would most likely be but a petrification instead. The student must have had the good fortune of having looked in a reflective surface at the beast rather than straight into its eyes and had been placed into a rigid coma rather than outright killed; he’d thought it might be a possibility but he’d always assumed the chances of having a handy reflective surface would be rather minimal. What did not shock him though, but rather reaffirmed certain suspicions, was that the victim was not muggle born. The truth of the matter was that there were many more purebloods and even halfbloods in the school than there were the pure unadulterated mudbloods that Tom was taken for.

It was simply a matter of statistics.

Presuming that the basilisk did not possess any ability to tell a mudblood from another student then the chances of it only targeting muggle born students phenomenally low; there were simply too few of them to drive up the probability.

On the list of petrification and the details of the first incidence the name Prometheus Parkinson was written.

The whispers had really begun then. Rumors, gossip, Parkinson who had it out for Parkinson? He was an ass, that was well known, he was despised in the Slytherin house almost more than Tom had been in the beginning of his Hogwarts career but who had it out to petrify him? And how, petrification was not easy magic, not to the extent it seemed to be affecting Parkinson, it wasn’t everyone who could do that.

Still, to Tom’s surprise his name did not come up on the list of suspects, it seemed as if somehow over the years and in spite of his prefect’s position he had disappeared into the shadows of Hogwarts as if he was no more than the Sorting Hat, or a desk, or any other part of the school. Sometimes interesting, very pretty to look at, good for earning house points, but little else. He had disappeared without even realizing it, at least within Slytherin. Unless they needed a mudblood as an example it was as if he wasn’t even there at all. How can someone that doesn’t exist hold a grudge against a rat like Parkinson?

The first victim there were no thoughts of, I might be next, it was a contained incident. Worrying, certainly, but one no doubt caused by some other malicious student that was unlikely to repeat itself. He heard no rumors of slithering in the pipes or mentions that the words were still written on the walls refusing to budge.

In the end Parkinson was only thought of a quarter as much as Grindlewald whose threats had been more explicit and understandable to the general population.

The basilisk still slithered in the walls at that point, still talking of the kill that had yet to come.

* * *

_The Petrified: Parkinson, Prometheus February 25, 1943_

_The Dead: N/A_

* * *

After the first incident the petrifications increased rapidly, petrifications but not death, and Tom found himself wondering if he was disappointed that it was not death. Pacing in his room he’d think of a dead rat on the floor, the color of Azrael’s eyes, and found that death was somehow more dramatic and appealing and altogether conclusive than petrification. There was still terror in the students, still whispered fears and furtive glances, but it was not the mind numbing horror of glassy-eyed death.

Eventually Tom concluded that the exits to the piping systems in the walls that the basilisk was making the most use of had to be in places with many reflective surfaces such as the various bathrooms or rooms like the library with large windows to look through.

With each new body found staring into glass, their eyes unwillingly drawn to the corners where something had once been lurking over their shoulders, the situation began to grow more serious. There was talk of a powerful spell, dark arts, from a vengeful Slytherin, a terrible disease that petrified, and other half-baked explanations.

The trouble was that there seemed to be no pattern. The incidents ranged across all four houses and all seven years, the blood had become quite mixed so that purebloods intermingled with mudbloods in their condition, it was maddeningly random for those who looked for reason.

It was perhaps for that randomness that the rumor that it was the heir of Slytherin did not make its way to the surface. In some ways Tom had expected it to, certainly he’d expected Dumbledore’s eyes on his, Dumbledore who he had once professed his parseltongue abilities to who had always resented Tom and marked him for something suspicious and vindictive. In these distracted days Dumbledore didn’t even glance in his direction.

He was far too focused on Grindelwald and France to place his suspicions on Tom Riddle.

Tom didn’t know what the faculty whispered behind closed doors only that the prefects were given new rules, no students alone at night, an earlier of curfew, always walk with someone you knew, and patrol together. He’d remembered standing there with an empty expression, eyes dull, looking across at his fellows all standing stiff and straight and attempting to hide the fear in their eyes. Looking at Minerva McGonagall he wondered if it was the first time she truly had to exercise her house’s main trait of bravery.

It was unsurprising, anticlimactic, and predictable in a way that Tom had thought it would be but hoped it wouldn’t. How dull, he thought, to be unsurprised by the true nature of mankind.

* * *

_The Petrified: Parkinson, Prometheus February 25, 1943_

_Prince, Eileen March 3, 1943_

_Stone, Andrew March 5, 1943_

_Davis, Helen March 13, 1943_

_Longbottom, Algernon March 15, 1943_

_The Dead: N/A_

* * *

She was almost asking for it, with how much time she spent in the bathroom without looking in a mirror, it was almost as if she had been waiting for it to happen all those years without realizing it.

Myrtle Warren was the first death and by the look on her face she barely even realized it. It was so similar to that rat, he’d thought as he’d watched her body dragged out of the bathroom, glazed eyes and no expression her mouth just forming that small “oh” of surprise.

So that was it, the end she had reached, not a secretary, clerk, or housewife but only this. This statistic listed in his notebook and act of terror for others, no one would mourn her, perhaps her parents who had already lost her that day she became a witch.

That was the tragedy, he thought, of being muggle born. Being torn from one world so completely without truly entering the other, wherever they went they were barred.

She did not linger in the infirmary and her funeral was a quiet and small affair that was over almost as quickly as it begun. No one bothered to wear black in her wake.

Petrification proved to be one thing but death was entirely another.

The prefects and faculty had been summoned to meet with Dippet and they each stood before him, crowded before his desk, looking everything from grim to terrified with the portraits glaring down at each of them as if this madness were somehow their fault.

“This can’t go on.” Dippet said, staring down at his desk, refusing to meet any of their eyes. He looked broken, more worn than Tom had ever seen him, “Petrified students and now dead students, we cannot allow this to continue. The perpetrator must be found or they will have no choice but to shut us down.”

Tom couldn’t help but think that it was funny how it was only now, in the face of immediate death that the wizards trembled so easily, when the blitz had been passed off as a muggle and irrelevant thing.

He looked up at them, dark agitated eyes surveying the crowd, “I have spoken with the board of governors and they will not stand for this. If there should be another death, if that student should be… You all understand, don’t you?”

If that student should be someone important, and not a Myrtle Warren, is what he meant to say.

In the end Myrtle would be the one and only death in the whole affair. A few days later a third year half-giant Gryffindor, Hagrid, was brought to the headmaster’s office for possession of an acromantula by his prefect Minerva McGonagall. The Wizengamot had found him guilty and his wand had been snapped and the affair had been solved without much ado. The day had been ended with much celebration on the government and a sigh of relief on the part of the school as the storm cloud passed over.

So then it was over before it had even truly begun.

* * *

_The Petrified: Parkinson, Prometheus February 25, 1943_

_Prince, Eileen March 3, 1943_

_Stone, Andrew March 5, 1943_

_Davis, Helen March 13, 1943_

_Longbottom, Algernon March 15, 1943_

_The Dead: Warren, Myrtle March 20, 1943_

* * *

He made one final trip down into the basilisk’s lair once the dust had settled. He found it sleeping in that cavern beyond Salazar’s statue looking rather pleased with itself and the chaos it had caused.

_“Well done.”_ Were Tom’s first words, it lifted its head to look at him and in that moment it looked almost like a child unaware of the finer aspects of reality.

_“The vermin are leaving, master, the vermin are dying.”_ Such contentment, contained in hissing. Tom smiled pleasantly back at it, his arms at his side, and simply stood.

_“Yes, you did quite well. Unfortunately the killer has been found and brought to justice before the Wizengamot so I’m afraid our time together is at an end.”_

Green light and then the corpse of a snake. A rat, a girl, and a snake quite the variety on his resume of the darkest arts. He stared at it for a few moments, taking in the sight of the World Snake defeated, its eyes staring uselessly forward petrifying nothing. Then with cool detachment he stepped forward and began harvesting the corpse.

* * *

Conclusion:

IV

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death's twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

                V

_Here we go round the prickly pear_

_Prickly pear prickly pear_

_Here we go round the prickly pear_

_At five o'clock in the morning._

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

                    _For Thine is the Kingdom_

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

                    _Life is very long_

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

                    _For Thine is the Kingdom_

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

_This is the way the world ends_

_This is the way the world ends_

_This is the way the world ends_

_Not with a bang but a whimper._


	11. Chapter 11

Perhaps it was simply that Tom had been unconsciously looking for him. In the Chamber of Secrets, in the hallways, in the room of requirement, he had caught himself looking for Azrael in all of these places as if he was a thing to be caught out of the corner of his eyes before he could be seen fully.

Things in Hogwarts settled, Minerva McGonagall was awarded for a special unnamed service rendered to the school, in her photograph she looked surprisingly ashen as she stared forward at the camera and her smile had been rather strained. There was no honor and glory in incarcerating and expelling a friendless student in your own house.

He suspected that she was one of the few who doubted Hagrid’s guilt, she’d always been rather studious, and perhaps deep down somewhere in her head she remembered that acromantula killed but they did not petrify. There was no doubt that left unmolested that spider would have continued to grow to the point where it did devour the students and poison them but it would never have petrified them. In a way, Tom mused after the half-giant had been expelled, Tom had given him the gift of innocence by inadvertently framing him before the spider could act. Unfortunately for Minerva she was also highly logical and believed in Occam’s Razor even if she didn’t know the name, the acromantula was the simplest and certainly the most sound explanation, after all the Chamber of Secrets was a myth at the end of the day.

Dumbledore certainly doubted Hagrid’s guilt, the man had pleaded with Dippet to allow the boy to be taken on as an apprentice to the grounds keeper, to not throw him to the streets as if he was a squib. Tom had expected that Dumbledore would turn his eyes to Tom, he had always suspected Tom and basilisks were snakes that petrified and Tom had once ignorantly told the man that the snakes sometimes talked to him, but strangely enough he didn’t. Tom had been written off, Tom was no longer even suspicious to the man, no he instead would catch Dumbledore’s eyes narrowing at the empty seat next to his and the person who simply wasn’t there.

Dumbledore suspected Azrael.

Perhaps it was T.S. Eliot written on the walls in rooster’s blood, perhaps it was the fact that the deaths seemed entirely random without cause or justification, perhaps it was the fact that they had continued until Dippet had said enough was enough and that some culprit, any culprit, must be found. Whatever it was Dumbledore seemed decided and had pinned the blame on the one person who had not even been present at the time.

He had always disliked Dumbledore, ever since that first meeting with his wardrobe on fire, but it was then that he found the man almost as despicable as Dippet in his own self-assured way. It seemed that Dumbledore was content to let things lie even when it began to be rumored that the missing Azrael was in fact the first victim whose body was lost somewhere in the bowels of the castle; Dumbledore would only stare at empty chairs and narrow his eyes at the sight of them.

It was around the time that Tom began taking his OWLs that glimpses of Azrael began to resurface in ways unrelated to his disappearance and the Chamber of Secrets. It was around that time, after all, that the stories of Grindelwald’s sudden and seemingly impossible defeat began circulating through Europe.

They said that Grindelwald had been very close to crossing the channel, within weeks he expected to be in the English countryside headed towards London. France’s magical community had been left in near ruins, hardly a muggleborn left and those who were had long since vanished underground and out of sight, as Hitler pushed through Europe Grindelwald was said to follow eagerly and closely behind. He never would make it to England though.

One morning, it was said, he woke up and there was no one left. All his men, his followers, his prisoners were simply gone and he was standing alone in a field of wheat with only the robes on his back and a thin wand in his grasp. He’d stumbled about for a bit, dazed in the sunlight, shouting frantic orders in German when he stopped and found someone staring back. There were few descriptions of the other man, they said that he dressed in black and was very pale, he seemed no older than a school boy and yet one would not look at him and think that he had apparated from Beauxbatons or some other wizarding school. The young man in black did not have a wand.

They stared across at each other for a few moments and then suddenly Grindlewald was the one without the wand staring in horror over the wheat fields and then, as they said it, he simply wasn’t there at all.

The story had been told and retold, starting from a few eye witnesses until it finally reached Hogwarts. There was no doubt that pieces were missing, that things were distorted (one version said that Grindelwald met Death in Elysium and failed to pass a test of righteousness) but even so Tom could see his green eyes staring back.

He remembered a library and a small thin green eyed boy staring across at him with mild amusement.

_“Looking for your wand, Azrael?”_

_“No, enough people are already looking for it. If I were to get involved things might derail very quickly.”_  

The wizarding war had already ended before it even had time to reach England. There was shock, relief, disappointment, joy, and numbness that seeped through the castle. Slytherin fell silent, no words for Tom either, each heir of a noble house simply staring ahead into the bleak future. Some of the muggleborn students cried in public when they heard the news, unable to stop the tears or the relieved smiles on their faces. Dumbledore simply stared out the window, lost, still somewhere in France with the missing Grindelwald and the pale rider who killed him without a second glance.

And Tom, Tom was in Stalingrad, remembering a dream of Azrael’s words, _“There were things that needed to be done.”_

* * *

After that he seemed to be everywhere, hidden in news articles, in the corner of picture frames, staring out into the camera with bright too green eyes. The trick wasn’t looking in the Prophet which was as useless as ever focusing on the miraculous defeat of Grindelwald and searching for the mysterious young wizard who did it, no, the trick was to look for the muggles.

Disarmament, disarmament, everywhere disarmament the guns suddenly jammed or disappeared altogether, the tanks broken down, the bombs rendered hollow and the vision of a pale man in black whose unbearded face was that of a schoolboy. 

The war stopped until all they had left to fight each other with was their own fists and the rocks they could pick up from the street.

The distorted news coming out of Germany spoke of labor camps in flames, of men who disappeared in the way that Grindelwald had simply vanished in a golden field, of a country altered and halted and simply stopped overnight.

Again and again he saw these stories of Deus Ex Machina, of God descended and ending a world war with little more than a snap of his fingers, and in every one of them Azrael’s eyes glittered. Once, in the Room of Requirement, Azrael had broken Gamp’s law for a cake to celebrate something as meaningless as Tom’s induction into the Slug Club. What were his possibilities if he was motivated beyond something as shallow as that?

He seemed to be everywhere, often two places at once, but Tom could not shake the conviction that it was him and only him out there. Somewhere out there in the muggle ether amid the sounds of gun fire and the shouting of men he was standing dressed in black and looking at the red eye of Mars as if the very sight of it meant war.

Tom didn’t know how he felt, he wasn’t sure he felt anything at all.

In between OWLs as the clock ticked closer to the day he would board the train and leave he wondered what Azrael would make of it, of his fifth year, of everything as he waded in blood. There was no room to talk, he knew that now, and possibly Azrael had never felt the need to but now he knew that there was no justification necessary. Tom had taken a school, Azrael had taken the world.

What was Voldemort in comparison to that?

It had always been a shallow and childish dream, he had realized that with Azrael’s disappearance from Hogwarts, it had been built on false promises offered by a world that glittered but lacked any true gold. Voldemort had been his escape, fantasy that he would have despised as weak in any other person but for himself it was vision, how could it be escapism when he would make it reality?

But for what, for what would he bother to breathe life into Voldemort for? Voldemort was the basilisk, a thing of terror that creeped silently through the hall inspiring fear and death in the populace, dead and dissected and put to better use packed away in the bottom of his trunk to be sold in Knockturn Alley for the best price.

He’d killed Voldemort with that last green light, down in the dungeons of the school, where no one else could see or grieve. There had been no grieving though, only emptiness, as if it had been dead in his mind for quite some time.

“He can have the world.” Tom found himself saying to the ceiling of his dorm room, “He can have the mudbloods, the muggles, the wizards, the blind and bumbling dogs. I am done with it.”

It was time to close the doors on that golden vision in his head it had served its purpose and it was time for something new to take its place.

We are all our possibilities, Azrael had once said, and it was time to look beyond just the one terribly vivid could have been that he had imagined for himself.

* * *

For the first time he did not return to the orphanage in shame. Greeted by the grey exterior and the pale children inside he felt nothing, it was simply a place that he resided in, if only for a little while. In that way it was no different than London, Hogwarts, or any other place he might be. For the first time he understood how Azrael must have felt about Britain.

Two more summers and he would be free of the place. He had always assumed that was when Voldemort would begin but now it was only the moment where he could leave trunk in hand and never look back. He intended that final image all the same.

He had intended, in the beginning of the year, when he had found out about his blood and his ancestry (no longer mudblood, no longer orphan) to search for his relatives. That image of his father, so ingrained into his imagination, had been brought to life again and he had ached for it in a way he couldn’t describe. Now though he did not even have to look, his father would be human, wizard or muggle, and in the end that was unacceptable.

He knew it was irrational and no doubt untrue but some part of him wished he had been born from nothingness, simply that he existed one day, and that he was tied to nothing and no one in this realm of existence. That seemed less shameful, in a way, less terribly human.

It seemed he walked to his room without realizing it, passing through the gray halls, past the terrified children who remembered and the ones who had been warned if they didn’t, past all those faceless orphans who meant nothing in the scheme of things, passing it all until there he was standing in the undecorated place with the gray cot in the corner looking out the window at the city of London stretching in the distance.

It had once held such promise. How disappointing things were at the end of things, death, terror, glory, they were only words written by a very clever playwright convincing the audience as if all these things were reality when in truth they were only words.

He didn’t know how long he stared out that window, at the setting sun reflecting against the glass until it was almost blinding, but it was long enough so that when he turned back to the cot there was a grinning shadow that hadn’t been there before and the sound of dry desperate chuckling.

A young man, taller than Tom remembered, with a thin pale face and dark curling hair and eyes the color of painless instant death. “I am so very tired, Tom, but then you look very tired as well.”

“Azrael."


	12. Chapter 12

He did not immediately accuse as he stepped forward, ask him where he had been, why he had left, no instead he was left in a sort of dumb silence as he almost mechanically reached out to touch Azrael’s pale face as if to reassure himself that the Hufflepuff was really there. Azrael did not move away from Tom’s hands or lean towards them, he just looked across at Tom, with a small smile.

“Hello Tom, I trust Hogwarts has been treating you well?” There was a joke in there and Tom surprised himself by laughing at it, he had rarely laughed at Azrael’s jokes mostly because they were rarely funny, but the words brought a relieved sort of smile to his face that made everything seem easier.

Tom continued to map Azrael’s face, not caring if it seemed weird, just memorizing the features with his hands so that he could recreate them by memory if he were so inclined. When he finally stopped he leaned against Azrael in sudden exhaustion as if all the energy had been sucked from him and yet somehow there was still a smile on his face.

“I heard you made a tour of Europe.” Tom said distantly, “Did you manage to find the traveling wand?”

Azrael looked over to his shoulder where Tom’s head was resting, his eyebrows raised slightly, but he said nothing only leaned back on his hands while looking at the ceiling, “Of course, it was hardly the only reason I left, but one cannot leave one’s wand unattended for too long.”

“Of course.” Tom parroted.

They sat in silence for a few moments, saying nothing to one another; the questions that had been hounding him at Azrael’s disappearance seemed so distant now and unimportant. Instead he studied Azrael’s features. He didn’t look too changed; his face was a bit more sculpted than it had been before but there was still no hint of facial hair to be seen. He was as thin as ever certainly, perhaps slightly taller, but that alien air he always had to him remained perfectly intact. Every time he looked at him, Tom found it was like seeing him for the first time everything about him seemed so overwhelming.

He thought he had that color of green imprinted in his mind, the flash of the killing curse, the color of wine bottles, of spring leaves in sunlight, and yet every time he saw it there was something new to be noted and memorized and stored within his mind.

“I don’t remember telling you exactly where Wool’s Orphanage was.” Tom noted drily, he’d been forced to give out the name if he’d wanted Azrael to reply to any of his letters, but he had never told him specifically where he might be found. It had been for Tom’s ease of mind, as if when he wasn’t seen by others then it didn’t make his orphaned mudblood status real, he knew that Azrael was aware of his heritage but even so the orphanage was not a place that he had wanted Azrael to see.

Those feelings, that shame, it all seemed so terribly petty now. What did an orphanage have to do with Tom? After all, it was only a place where he sometimes was.

“Ah, forgive me; I had forgotten what I was supposed to know and what I wasn’t. These last few months have been… draining.” He ended somewhat somberly, his eyes seemed distant then, in review of those memories.

Somehow Tom had missed even that, Azrael’s presence when he wasn’t present at all, when his mind was soaring elsewhere entirely leaving only his body behind.

“So you’ve done it then.” Tom said quietly feeling the movement of Azrael’s nod through the muscles in his shoulder.

“Yes, the war is over, finished for everyone.” There was a sigh then and he looked over at Tom with exhaustion and that rarely seen tenderness that he sometimes displayed, “I’m afraid I have nowhere to stay, Tom, would you mind terribly if I borrow the bed?”

The unsaid expectation being of course that the gentleman Tom was he would take the floor. Had it been anyone else Tom might have killed them for that presumption as it was he was sorely tempted to at least hit Azrael over the head but he settled for a cold glance that brooked no argument.

(There was also the twinge of recently developed hormones in his brain that thought it was an excellent idea to be crammed in together with Azrael on a ridiculously small mattress but he decided that wasn’t even worth mentioning.)

“I am not sleeping on my own floor like a dog, we’ll share it.”

Azrael glanced dubiously down at the bed, a small twin sized mattress that was barely containing Tom as it was, and then he looked to Tom with raised eyebrows, “If you insist.”

He then unceremoniously rolled his way under the covers, still fully clothed, and shut his eyes. Tom watched him for a few moments, he didn’t sleep the way others did, even with the mechanical movements it seemed as if the body was only a shell then and that the true Azrael was elsewhere entirely having wandered off and left his human self behind. Tom brushed some of the dark hair away from Azrael’s face and traced the red lightning bolt scar that was almost always hidden behind one piece of curling hair or another.

Tomorrow, Tom thought to himself, I will ask what he has been doing and why he felt he had to leave tomorrow.

(The bed, as Azrael had noted but left unsaid, was a bit small especially with both of them in it. Azrael slept like the dead and didn’t take up too much room considering his height but Tom did find himself startled awake every time he found himself rolling too close to Azrael in his sleep so that his face was inches away from the other.

It was almost embarrassing, waking up with his arms flung over Azrael like some extra blanket, but the only reaction Azrael seemed to have to it was those raised eyebrows so Tom counted it as a success.)

* * *

Azrael’s wandless magic turned out to be more practical than he had ever lead Tom to believe.

The orphans, Mrs. Cole, anyone really besides Tom barely noticed Azrael’s presence. They did not bump into him, or question why he was there, but rather to them he was an anonymous orphan who seemed singularly uninteresting to everyone.

Sitting alone at breakfast Azrael eating his share of porridge with more enthusiasm than Tom believed possible he noted how even by sitting in Azrael’s mere proximity he seemed to become boring by association.

He looked so out of place there, in his black foreign clothing, the loose cloak and dark boots that always struck Tom as so not European he didn’t know what to call it. That wasn’t even touching on his physical appearance which was just as striking and alien as always. It was amazing that any sort of magic to repel attention would work on him.

“Is it a notice me not charm?” Tom asked as Azrael was eating. Tom had never really paid attention to Azrael’s eating habits as the boy had always sat at the Hufflepuff table but he would think he’d remember if Azrael had eaten this much. Whatever he had been doing in Europe, which was quite a bit by the sounds of the rumors, it had drained him immensely.

Azrael shook his head, “Not exactly, it’s a little more flexible than that, there’s no real incantation so much as a desire to be average and altogether uninteresting.”

Tom didn’t say anything but rather thought back to his lessons with Azrael, most magic had been explained in that way, in terms of desires and wants and descriptions of the perception of the universe. When they had first started Tom suspected he hadn’t really understood what Azrael was saying and towards the end he had been too proud, reality had always seemed so rigid to him, and it was only now that he began to saw the fuzzy outlines around standards that Azrael took as a given. Still, it made him more than a little irritated, considering the small good it had done Tom over the years.

It seemed better to change the topic to what Tom was truly interested, Azrael’s activities in his absence from Hogwarts.

“Hm, the man in black people have been talking about recently, it is you isn’t it?” Tom asked, although he was fairly certain of the answer.

“It does seem most likely, I do have a habit of always dressing prepared for a funeral.” Azrael noted after finishing his porridge with a sigh, “Of course, I’m called quite a few things, so who can really say?”

Tom didn’t comment on that but rather pressed on with a statement this time, “You defeated Grindelwald.”

“Yes, among other things.” Azrael said with a more grave expression.

“Was it as quick as they all said it was?”

Azrael was silent with that for a few moments, clearly thinking how he best wished to answer the question, finally he said, “Yes, to someone passing by it would be over in a blink, however it took me a long time to come to that decision so perhaps it took years.”

“Grindelwald was a dark lord.” Tom noted to which Azrael nodded his agreement, “The entire French ministry could not defeat him and somehow you did it in seconds.”

Azrael glanced at Tom, the exhaustion from the night before presenting itself in his eyes, “I’m sure, Tom, that it’s quite evident that I’m a little more powerful than most wizards.”

“I am more powerful than most wizards.” Tom rebutted, “What does that make you?”

“It makes me whatever you wish for it to make me, Tom.” Again he sighed and surveyed the other orphans picking them out here or there with an almost blank expression leaving Tom to only guess at his thoughts.

“Is this another ‘I am that I am’ speech?” 

That quirk of the lips, Tom being unwittingly funny again, and Azrael shook his head not in denial but as if to refute the situation itself, “Believe it or not I’m tired of giving that speech as well, still when I’m asked so many of the same questions I find I must repeat myself. It’s a problem that comes with having no definite human name to give.”

They left the table then, Azrael asking to see the outside of the orphanage as he’d missed Spring when caught in one battlefield or another, and Tom thought over those words. Azrael had always used the word human in an odd way, Tom had usually related it to Azrael’s penchant to not speak English, but this time Tom felt as if Azrael had given him something to chew over.

Whatever Azrael was or might be he wasn’t human. Tom felt he had known that for quite some time though. Everyone knew more or less that Azrael wasn’t human, it’s why they moved away from him, it’s why Tom moved closer to him, he looked so close but he wasn’t quite there. It just took Azrael to say it for it to click and cement itself in his mind.

He hadn’t been kind enough to offer an alternative, Tom I am not human rather I am a centaur without the horse legs, but he had offered something.

No wonder they got on so well, Tom thought, since humanity was proving to be very disappointing.

“Do you plan to stay here?” Tom asked when they had reached the overgrown and ridiculously small excuse for a garden caught in the middle of urban London as it was. Azrael looked at the drab and dirty city as if it was something beautiful and worth treasuring in his memory and it took him a while to turn to Tom.

“I suppose, would you prefer I went elsewhere?” He asked to which Tom shook his head without any real thought to it. Azrael stared at him blankly for a few moments, perhaps evaluating him against that template written up in his head, but then he smiled back and seemed to relax.

“You’ve changed,” Azrael commented, “Where has your pride gone?”

Tom had known he had changed, within the past year he had stretched himself thin until he was another Tom entirely from the one he had been, one that didn’t dream of ruling cattle or rising above the status of mudblood. The waters felt calm but at the same time with the death of the basilisk and in some ways the death of Voldemort he felt lost and directionless as if staring off into the horizon and deciding which path to take. There were now so very many possibilities and yet they all seemed flat to his eyes, as false as the fool’s gold that the wizarding world was comprised of, nothing more than empty promises.

“I don’t really know.”

They stood in silence then, just looking out onto the weeds and the grass that made up the yard, as well as the few flowers that had managed to bloom without being tended to.

Finally Tom said in a quiet voice, “I suppose there are some things I should tell you.”

* * *

When the story had finished Azrael wouldn’t comment on its contents until that night in the shared bed with Tom. His expression had been one of those that Tom couldn’t name, a mix of human emotions until it was something that was purely Azrael’s. They had spent most of the rest of the day in silence, a few words exchanged here or there, but otherwise there had seemed that there was nothing to say.

It wasn’t until Tom was asleep and dreaming that he was roused awake by Azrael’s hand that they talked about it. His green eyes had been burning then, almost like stars, against the darkness of the orphanage bedroom.

“Unleashing a basilisk on the school is a very dangerous thing to do.” There was no inflection in those hushed words, and Tom nodded his consent, because it was but that had been the point of the thing after all.

“I don’t understand you.” Azrael finally concluded, his expression not changing in the slightest, still looking at Tom with that strange insistence. There was no accusation in them, no sense of betrayal, only that burning determination that had been sparked into life the Christmas before.

“The feeling,” Tom said with a light smile, “is entirely mutual, my friend.”

Azrael’s lips twitched in a mirroring expression, they said nothing for a few moments, merely stared at each other. “What do you plan to do now, Tom, that Jörmungadr has been vanquished?”

Tom looked up towards the gray ceiling letting a sigh escape him as that ever present feeling of hollowness returned, “I have absolutely no idea. By the by, the basilisk actually didn’t have a name, it regarded them as human contraptions much in the same way you do. Also, how did you know it was a giant snake in Slytherin’s chamber?”

Azrael shrugged slightly the sheets rustling with the movement, “Oh I pick things up here and there, you’d be surprised how much you can learn, just by being in a place.”

Tom’s eyebrows rose at that trying to imagine just how Azrael could manage to learn any information when he had barely attended Hogwarts even when he was there, “You’re telling me this, Azrael, I am the master of observation.”

“And yet you don’t even know my first name, for shame, Tom.”

Tom laughed slightly at that causing Azrael to blink and Tom realized that when they first met, perhaps even for the first few years, he would have been sorely tempted to break Azrael’s bones for that comment. That anger though, the constant thought of being offended, had drifted from him though and only that emptiness and feeling of being lost remained.

Still, he could not reclaim Voldemort, no matter the false direction it had provided for him. Somehow he knew without even truly considering that the path to being a dark lord was closed to him now, there was no longer any true purpose in it.

Lying in silence he assumed Azrael had drifted to sleep when he heard a muffled word from next to him, “Research.”

“Hm?” Tom watching as Azrael’s half-lidded eyes regarded him.

“I have always admired your ability to research.”

After that he rolled away from Tom concluding the conversation and drifting off to sleep leaving Tom to stare at his thin shoulders and wonder when Azrael had caught him in the act of researching and found it so impressive.

“Research.” Tom echoed the word looking at the ceiling as if the answer might be inscribed there. There was however only the paint looking back at him and the sound of Azrael’s hushed breathing.

There was less glory in it than there was in Voldemort, certainly, but with that quiet assurance with which Azrael had said the word it allowed him to see it flickering before him if only for a moment.

“Research.” He repeated, this time less seriously as if it was one of Azrael’s usual terrible attempts at a pun, and put it out of his mind drifting to sleep.


	13. Chapter 13

In later years that summer with Azrael would always have a surreal cast to it, a rose colored tint, quite unlike his other memories and recollections to the point where he would wonder if it had occurred at all. There had been them, in that summer of his fifth year, and elsewhere there had been the world.

 

That was how he liked to think on it.

 

There was a sense of normalcy to it, a domestic tone that he would never quite recover. Where odd little moments that had nothing to do with ambition, glory, honor, or that insatiable desire to go out and do something, anything at all, became prevalent. In the face of Azrael those things which defined a Slytherin versus a Hufflepuff became so terribly small.

 

In that summer he came closer to Azrael’s secrets than he ever had before and it was simply because he asked.  

 

“Do you own anything other than black?” Tom had asked as he had watched Azrael roll out of the too small bed, he had taken to shedding some of the layers of his clothing, but to Tom’s surprise the thin material of both his tunic and pants were black as well. Tom wasn’t sure why he had expected some other color, Azrael had always worn black for as long as Tom had known him, but he had expected it to stop at the level of the clothes he slept in.

 

After that first week Azrael didn’t sleep as long as Tom, he claimed to be something of an insomniac, but he still would squeeze his way into that bed at some point during the night so that by the time Tom woke up the next morning Azrael was next to him. Even without sleep he always looked ruffled in the mornings, his hair more askew, and his eyes a bit brighter and more distant as if he had to readjust himself to appearing human.

 

“At the moment, no.” Azrael said with a sigh as he searched for his discarded garments around the room.

 

“Is it against your religion, to wear anything other than black?” Tom asked as he himself stood from the bed waiting for Azrael to finish the tour of the room and find all his things.

 

Azrael was surprisingly messy, although he wasn’t sure why he was surprised by it considering the state of the Room of Requirement as Azrael’s workshop, he supposed he had never really considered the thought of Azrael living anywhere so adjectives like neat or messy didn’t really apply. At any rate he had a habit of simply dropping his clothing, books, and other belongings on the floor when he was too tired to function and then wandering off towards the bed and passing out.

 

Once things were left on the floor, unless they were needed, they tended to stay there.

 

“My religion, no, I have a much more abstract idea of religion than most.” He said as he reached his hand under the wardrobe to grab at some missing item. “No, it’s others who find it offensive.”

 

“Others?”

 

With a triumphant grin Azrael held up the offending strip of cloth and began quickly wrapping it around one of his hands. “Oh yes, I’ve found that people have very peculiar opinions when it comes to irrelevant things that I do. In some cultures I actually am expected to wear white and have to change my entire wardrobe, however, for the most part it is generally agreed upon that color is a no.”

 

“Why should it matter whether you wear color or not?”

 

Azrael simply observed him for a moment, deciding what he wanted to say and how he wished to say it, as if it was a more difficult question than Tom had originally intended.

 

“It’s the idea of things, ideas get caught in the head and then they grow until they are carried as if they were real living things, and to stand against them isn’t always wise (particularly when they’re so well formed). It’s a small reassurance, on my part really, and in the end I exist because of them…”

 

Azrael walked over to Tom and grabbed at his arm dragging him through the room and downstairs to where a hearty breakfast of gruel was waiting as if physically removing him from the previous topic, “I find that the oddest of all though is the insistence that I be a master at chess when really I’m quite terrible at it.”

 

Over the summer Azrael’s statement about chess would be confirmed as they would play late into the evening, the conquered figurines growing continually on Tom’s side of the bored as the setting sun cast red shadows on their faces.

 

Still, in those moments there was no ache for Voldemort, no desire to seek out his father, only the moment the chess set and the setting sun.

 

At some point during the summer, during one of those sweltering nights that had Tom lying on top of his covers while sleep evaded him, he remembered discussing these feelings with Azrael.

 

“I’ve never been happy or even content.”

 

“Oh?” Azrael asked, indicating he was listening even as he stood before the moonlit window staring at the stars.

 

“No,” Tom said softly thinking back, “I was always reaching for something, some unknown thing that I hadn’t found yet… Greatness, I was searching for greatness.”

 

Azrael turned to him slightly then, as if caught by the word, but somehow even when facing away from the window Tom could still see the stars reflected in his eyes, “Perhaps that is simply life, Tom, a search for some ephemeral ineffable concept to provide definition.”

 

He heard the words but he didn’t think on them instead closing his eyes for a moment and searching for a memory drifting somewhere inside his head.

 

“You once told me that greatness is a transitory experience, that it is never consistent.”

 

Azrael consented, “I did.”

 

“I wonder why the sorting hat didn’t tell me that, it only told me that I would achieve great things, but it never said what greatness meant.” Tom gave a small laugh thinking back to how reassured he had been at those words, as if it had reaffirmed all his hidden visions, when really it had turned out to be so empty.

 

Azrael smiled then and sat on the bed next to Tom with a mischievous glint in his eye as if he was about to tell a very bad joke, “Do you want to hear what the sorting hat told me?”

 

Tom had never asked, had never felt the need to for the longest time, and then by the time he did it had no longer seemed important. Hufflepuff was so far from defining what Azrael was, he fit none of the houses, he transcended Hogwarts so how could he be defined by such broad characteristics like loyalty and tenacity.

 

Azrael leaned in as if to impart a great secret, “The hat told me that if I refused to disappear and fade as I should then it had no choice but to send me to Hufflepuff for my sheer stubbornness.”

 

A startled smile appeared on Tom’s face as he thought about how Azrael must have driven the hat mad, it was a wonder it ever recovered from the incident, “What does that even mean?”

 

“It means, Tom, that you should never trust a talking hat.”

 

It really was one of Azrael’s better attempts at humor, or so he thought with the aid of sleep deprivation, everything was funny when it was dark and your mind was teetering on the edge of dreams.

 

It was with the half-wonderment that comes of sleep deprivation, of the slow churning connections drifting in his brain, that he concluded, “I think I am happy, I am still and not searching, and I feel… content. Perhaps I don’t have to look.”

 

And he was, even in the morning after his brain had had a chance to reboot, he was oddly content to allow things to stay as they were to linger in summer with Azrael for eternity.

 

Life is change though, it is the steady movement and erosion of time, of flickering light, and so the summer passed as it was always doomed to. There are very few things which are eternity and that summer was not one of them.

 

* * *

 

 

“The Jews are saying it was an act of God.”

 

They were in the yard watching the city beyond the fenced pitiful excuse for a garden simply watching the smoke stacks and automobiles and various other signs of urban life. Tom had been reading the muggle newspaper idly along with the Prophet, a habit he had picked up in his search for Azrael’s whereabouts, and strangely enough the unnamed Azrael was still frequently mentioned in both.

 

“Hm?” Azrael responded eyes glancing towards Tom.

 

“From Dachau, Auschwitz, the concentration camps, they say it was an angel or the messiah himself. You made quite the impression.” Tom noted the last phrase capturing Azrael’s full attention.

 

Tom rarely held all of Azrael’s attention, he knew it, and sometimes he felt insulted by that fact but other times it was a little relieving. When Azrael looked at you, truly looked at you, it was as if he saw everything you ever were and ever could be in one single instant and found it lacking. His eyes became sharp and in them you would be reflected in such a way that you couldn’t help but flinch at the image produced there.

 

“Yes, I suppose I did.” He concurred in a soft voice that was all the more dangerous for its levity.

 

“The wizards are catching on, they were focused on the disappearance of Grindlewald for some time, but now they’re starting to pay attention to the muggles again… Do you realize that you have effectively obliterated the Statue of Secrecy single handedly?”

 

“Yes, I do.” The words were grave, there was some past anger in them, something that struck to the core with Azrael as so few things did. The yard seemed to grow darker for a moment as Azrael’s expression became more grim and it took a few moments for reality to reassert itself.

 

“The International Statue of Secrecy has only been in place for a few centuries.” He said in that tone he used to relay what he felt were indisputable facts, statements of reality, rather than anything that held true weight, “Wizards live a day and feel it has been forever, they forget that most cultures embraced magic and only a few burned them for it. In the concentration camps there were wizards as well, Hebrew rabbis who practiced the kabbalahstic arts, and your petty Eurpoean wizards say they do not count simply because they don’t have a stick and speak Latin gibberish. This phase, this statute of secrecy, would never last even without my aid.”

 

He stopped then, forcibly cut himself off with a deep breath, and continued in a calmer manner, “The Statute of Secrecy is already crumbling at its foundations. Tell me Tom, what is magic? No, don’t, I’ll tell you. Magic is a force, an elementary force like gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear strong force, and the nuclear weak force there is no difference between these things. It is poorly named and thus poorly thought of, twisted by language into something inexpressible and divine, it is no more divine than the rest of the universe. It exists outside of you as well as within you the only difference is that you can access it directly and they can’t. It is the universe; not ineffable, not hidden, not beyond the comprehension of those who cannot see it for themselves. Muggles in this way are already accessing magic, they have already found it for themselves without the help of the wizards. A few centuries ago, had a man come by with the electric light bulb, the wizards would have proclaimed that it was the result of a spell. Nuclear fusion and fission are simply half completed acts of transfiguration. The statute was broken long before I touched it, and perhaps no one could see it, but the fact remains that the wizards could never stay hidden forever as if they were something separate than humanity.” 

 

Azrael finished then with a look of frustration the words having flooded out of him at a rate that Tom had never seen before from him. There had been emotion towards the end of that, true frustration, that he had never witnessed in Azrael before. Azrael was always so untouchable, so terribly aloof, that to seem him affected was almost alarming.

 

“I doubt the various ministries will see it that way.” He finally said to which Azrael sighed looking somewhat worn.

 

“No, of course they won’t, they never do.”

 

Tom had the feeling that these newspaper articles, the recollections of Azrael’s interventions, would become significant. It was only a feeling then, he lacked the connection, because as usual he did not want to make the connection. The consequences of Azrael’s actions extended far beyond the end of a war, and he felt that Azrael knew that, it was only Tom who thought that the end was truly the end.

 

Azrael, in many ways, belonged to Tom. Tom had not always felt this way, certainly not when he was eleven on a train, but the feeling had grown over the years until it was almost indisputable. The idea that Azrael could be demanded by others, could be partitioned to the world, was inconceivable to him.

 

So he let the conversation naturally drop, neither mentioning as references and theories about the man in black grew stronger, and living through the summer as if it was never ending. If he had realized it sooner, in retrospect, he was certain it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.

 

* * *

 

The dream for immortality had not left him, it had merely evaded him for a slight while. It had been so wrapped in the fabric of Voldemort, of transcendence, and above all of accepted superiority and power over his wizard brethren that for a moment he had forgotten it was a thing in and of itself.

 

When he was very young he had once lynched a rabbit, it had been poorly done in retrospect, the thing had struggled half paralyzed in his arms as he had attempted to break its neck in a clean stroke. Later, as he had hung it from the rafters, as a message for little Billy Stubbs he had not been satisfied with his work but instead had been caught by the image of those glassy eyes staring back at him with nothing inside them. It had made him feel hollow, that was the best word for it, as if he too was that broken thrashing doll that the bunny had been only hadn’t realized it yet.

 

After much introspection, as much as he was capable of introspection as a nine year old, he realized he didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to be that rabbit, dangling from the rafters, looking at everything and nothing with his neck twisted in a direction it didn’t belong.

 

There was a big fuss for a long time, Mrs. Cole had rightfully blamed him even without evidence, he had always been the devil’s child she said. Billy had never looked at him quite the same way again but after a while things calmed down. The rest of the children forgot, as children often did, and Dennis and Amy would try their luck and find that Tom was hardly nicer to children than he was rabbits. Tom always remembered though, he always carried that rabbit with him, locked away inside his heart where he could turn to look at it every once in a while.

 

Tom still did not want to die.

 

There was no easy way to evade mortality, no light and clean way, at least according to the wizards. Tom had accepted that, had looked to the dark arts precisely because of it, only Flamel seemed to have succeeded and saved face and he was hardly divulging secrets of the stone. Between the basilisk, his ancestry, Azrael’s disappearance, Grindlewald, mudbloodism, and most importantly Voldemort himself Tom had set it aside for a little while. Not forgotten, never truly forgotten, but set it aside to look at it when the opportunity presented itself.

 

Perhaps that was not what Azrael had intended with his half-muttered suggestion of research but it was what Tom took from it all the same.

 

Tom hadn’t been ready to confront the issue of his mortality, not with Voldemort in his head, because the more he thought in it the more it seemed that changing his essence was an act that was more along the lines of Azrael’s magic rather than anything dark or light. To be unaffected by time or the elements, to always be caught in a single moment while all else is in transition, to be something other than yourself; a wizard would never have said words like those. 

 

His pride, even a year before, would not have allowed him to approach Azrael for a second time and state, “I want to resume the wandless magic lessons.”

 

Their chess game was interrupted, Azrael’s hand stalling and moving away from the piece so that he could better observe Tom. Outside the sun was hanging lazily in the sky, like some giant’s drowsy half lidded eye, that watched through the transparent glass of the window.

 

Much as he had when they were twelve Azrael had looked at him with raised eyebrows, “Are you sure? I seem to recall you calling them a waste of both your and my time as well as a pointless exercise in frustration.”

 

“I was wrong.” It was a short sentence, spat out, still surprisingly difficult to say but none the less hopelessly true. He had looked in all the wrong places, that was the truth of it.

 

Azrael stared at him in with an expression that was so shocked it was almost human, he seemed dumbfounded, as if Tom had somehow grown a second head and Tom couldn’t help but feel as if he himself was out of place had erred in some unfathomable way to bring up that expression.

 

“Stop that, you look ridiculous.” Tom said automatically before his eyes flickered to the chess set, “It’s still your turn by the way.”

 

With a shrug Azrael chose a piece seemingly at random from the bored and moved it forward setting himself up to be conquered by Tom as he always inevitably did, “Well, with an argument like that, how can I possibly say no?”

 

(As it was Tom would not end up taking these lessons for more than a few months; he doubted either of them had realized time was so very short.)


	14. Chapter 14

Strangely enough it was the muggle call that Azrael answered rather than the wizard. The wizards had noticed something odd about the abrupt end of the muggle war, it had seemed a permanent fixture at this point, and while they still hunted for Grindlewald’s killer they did not necessarily put two and two together. To them muggles were inherently different, almost a different species, and it would be inconceivable that the man in black who disposed of Grindlewald in a matter of seconds would be the same one who had ended the muggle war. By August of 1943 they were only just beginning to think that there was something not quite right about the way the muggle war had simply stopped, they weren’t yet desperate in searching for answers.

 

In the end the muggles were much more demanding in knowing the face of the man in black.

 

It had been bothering Azrael, the stories Tom would occasionally relay that were leaking out of the tabloids, the sheer confusion of the muggle world. Was there a war? Wasn’t there a war? Who had won and more importantly had anyone lost? No one seemed able to make up their mind all they knew was that they had somehow been prevented from fighting on such a colossal scale and that Nazism in Germany had all but disappeared yet the country had not quite fallen into the over the edge and into anarchy. No one knew what to make of it and each nation respectively demanded answers from a man who was nowhere to be found.

 

He doubted Azrael had any true intentions to reveal himself to them at that point. Whether he had intended to return to Hogwarts was questionable, he had been rather reluctant to confirm or deny his plans regarding his missing OWL scores when Tom had received his in the mail, but Tom doubted he had intended further interaction with the greater world. He had never liked attention, certainly he had never sought it out at Hogwarts or even in the orphanage. Azrael preferred to remain at a distance, to look at the world as if through a window, separated by some invisible barrier presented by his inhumanity. Tom seemed to be Azrael’s exception as Azrael himself was Tom’s but even then Azrael had never fully disclosed his nature to Tom in the years they had known each other. He had only given cryptic statements in the guise of poetry and let Tom make of them what he would.

 

No, Azrael had wanted to be the _kami_ _kaze_ the inexplicable deus ex machina, something that was passed off as beyond human control and thus untouched by humanity.

 

It seemed that the summer had been a form of escapism for Azrael as well.

 

It wasn’t until the impersonators started stepping forward that the fire of determination returned to Azrael’s eyes.

 

At first it was a few people here and there, easily revealed as frauds even by the muggles, young men who sometimes didn’t resemble Azrael in the slightest but with each one mentioned in the newspapers or rumored in the streets Azrael’s eyes grew darker. Tom remembered finding it funny, as if Azrael was an easy being to impersonate, as if he could be boiled down to black clothing and an aura of mystery.

 

Eventually though one of them managed to get close enough to be believable, the summer had almost ended by that point, and according to the newspapers the man in black had returned. He resembled Azrael only slightly, with pale skin and dark hair, he was stockier and he didn’t quite have the speech mannerisms correct but he was better than some of the better ones had been. When he first appeared in the papers Tom had smiled at the sight of it, “He looks half-way close, I wonder if he’s being sponsored by some government, after all what a benefit it would be to have a god like being on your side. Nothing quite raises the level of nationalism like the messiah.”

 

It was perhaps the first time he had seen Azrael truly alarmed, he had seen him frustrated, trapped in near constant ennui, depressed, and sometimes very rarely happy but he had never seen him afraid. It did not make him appear more human; it made him look old and more distant his eyes peering outwards further than Tom felt he could comprehend, in his expression there was the Wasteland.

 

He grabbed the paper out of Tom’s hands that morning, as he had never done before, and almost as if Tom wasn’t there he was reading through it a pace that was far too quick for human eyes.

 

Azrael did not act then, but he watched, he grew quiet and he disappeared for hours at a time in the middle of the night sometimes only returning after Tom had woken to an empty room. Even after the latest attempt had been found to be a fraud the behavior continued; ominously reminiscent of Azrael’s last days at Hogwarts.

 

One night instead of leaving Tom had found him pacing, a constant movement that he didn’t usually partake in; Azrael had always been the still sort of thinker not prone to fidgeting or other human movement unless he gave it some thought. Tom had woken in the middle of the night, his mind still half dreaming, to the vision of the quiet pendulum that Azrael made walking back and forth across the wooden floor. He looked as if he had been about to fall asleep, half of his usual outfit missing, but his thoughts had caught him instead and lead him in a merry if simple dance across the limited space of Tom’s room.

 

Eventually Azrael’s eyes flicked to his and he stopped walking, it seemed a forced action, as if his own movement had inertia in and of itself. “I like to think that I am not omnipotent.”

 

Tom said nothing his mind not entirely unconvinced that he was having a bizarre Azrael centered dream that was filled with cryptic nonsense that made little sense even in retrospect. The room seemed filled with shadows, the colors sucked out by the night, until all that was left was the distant green of Azrael’s eyes.

 

“I very much like to think that I am not omnipotent. I suppose I have never relayed to you my thoughts on God. You’ve always struck me as an atheist, most wizards are, and so I never thought to bring it up. I believe in God, it is not purely faith, I must believe in God. To exist, to function, to keep my sanity I must believe that there is a divine inhuman force that exists beyond what I am capable of; whether it is sentient or not, benign or not, is not entirely the point. In my good moments I know that I am fallible, not human that’s not the same thing, but fallible. I am not the end and the beginning and I am comforted by that. Those are my good moments, in my bad moments, I recognize that if there is some upperbound to my power then I have yet to find it.”

 

Azrael held himself, as if to stop himself from lurching forward, a kind of desperate madness dancing in his eyes. In that moment Tom would have believed that the killing curse, that green light, was being cast behind Azrael’s eyes and that otherwise his irises would be transparent.

 

“I shouldn’t have gone, not in person. It needed to be done, yes, but did I have to physically go myself? There are vague notions of my existence before a body, before this attempt at humanity, not memories but notions a not quite sentience that lends to me to believe that I was more than a concept before 1980. But if I didn’t have to be there myself, if I let myself drift from the physical realm from humanity altogether, then where does it stop? And it must stop somewhere Tom, I must stop somewhere, surely I am allowed that much.”

 

He gave off a sharp desperate laugh, still clutching at himself, and Tom still silently blinking and his body paralyzed from sleep and dreaming could only stare.

 

“I do not wish to be God.” The words were whispered and so very desperate that Tom couldn’t help but shudder at the sound of them.

 

Azrael seemed to pull himself together then, straightening himself and looking distantly out the window, away from Tom then, “I’m afraid I’ve thrust the Godhead upon myself this time, I’ve run out of excuses.”

 

The way he said it, that flat resignation, managed to pull Tom from sleep. He shifted underneath the covers, tearing them off, and wandered off over next to Azrael trying to bring himself into wakefulness.

 

“What are you talking about?” Tom asked, sleep having made him direct and more raw than he usually was, he felt as if he had only caught the shadows of Azrael’s words and everything was lost and jumbled in his head.

 

Azrael gave Tom an indulgent if bitter smile, “I’ve placed myself in a mighty fine predicament, you’ve seen it too, the imposters.”

 

Tom sighed wiping his face with a hand and sighing wondering what Azrael could find in such inconsequential beings, “What about them?”

 

“I cannot remain anonymous if men will clamor to take my place and abuse my actions for their own purposes.” Azrael said, again almost in a resigned way.

 

Tom felt a chill run through him, Azrael had not explicitly stated it but then he hadn’t the first time either, he felt his mind struggle through the binds of sleep as he really looked Azrael in the face. It was not the same expression, there was still determination, but it was less hopeful than he had looked that day in December.

 

“You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question but a statement and Azrael made no move to refute it and at that Tom felt something like led dropping through his chest.

 

“How can you just leave, again? Just because a few muggles think it’s fun to impersonate you, they’ll never get away with it, to them you’re a god all they need to do is ask for proof and they’ll immediately see it’s a fraud.”

 

“But it won’t always be muggles, Tom.” He said with a cool certainty.

 

He had only struck Azrael once before, in a dream, but this time backhanding him across the face felt so much more powerful than that had been. Azrael twisted under the blow but did not stagger or make any other sound, the red mark of Tom’s hand on his face was already beginning to bloom.

 

“So let them.” Tom said coldly.

 

Azrael straightened himself, not justifying his actions, not saying that Tom did not understand or that he had some obligation to these pitiful creatures known as humans. 

 

“What will you do?” Tom asked cocking his head and looking at Azrael, taking in his pretense of humanity, “After you reveal yourself to them as the true man in black, after they bicker and squabble among themselves over who has won this stupid little war, where will you turn? There will be no disappearing act, no fading back into the crowd, they will see you and every single one of them will have your face memorized. You will never be Azrael again or anything close to resembling it.”

 

“I know.”

 

“And what for, Azrael? What will these people truly gain from your discomfort, from your celebrity status? They are rabid dogs that are under the delusion that they can think, even should you appear before them and end their wars they will still tear at the carcasses of their brothers, they will always be disappointingly human, Azrael. They will have other wars, create other monstrosities, and they will look to you for answers. Don’t think you’ve solved their problems for them.” Tom gave a bitter laugh running a hand through his hair seeing how unmoved Azrael was, as he always was, untouchable to anyone and anything.

 

“It is not my purpose to solve their problems for them,” Azrael said a touch coldly, “However there are some things, some actions so grotesque, that even I am prompted to action. I may not always be accountable to them but I am accountable to myself and if I don’t take responsibility for my actions then some imposter will.”

 

They stared at each other for a few moments, anger in both of their faces, poised on the edge of a fight as Tom’s mind screamed at him to beat Azrael into submission. He couldn’t walk away without kneecaps, now could he?

 

Azrael softened first, sighing and closing his eyes, as if resigning himself to the situation and he reached out hesitantly for Tom’s shoulder placing a hand on it. Tom felt himself flinch with the contact his eyes still locked on Azrael’s.

 

“I could never have returned to Hogwarts, Tom, my time there was done.” He said almost softly as if it was an apology, “To go back now would be a mockery of everything that school stands for, a pointless charade. All things change, Tom, that’s what life is after all.”

 

It was hard to speak through the mindless rage, that choking feeling that blotted out thoughts, so that all he could understand was the feeling coursing through him. Finally though, a crooked grin appearing on his face, breathing deeply he looked Azrael in the eye.

 

“…And mine isn’t?” It was barely even a question, to Tom the answer was obvious, he had been done with Hogwarts years ago he’d simply never realized it.

 

“What can that place offer me now?” And it was truly a question because Tom didn’t know, he didn’t know the answer anymore, it was unclear and raw and it hurt to think of himself so directionless sitting in those classes like any other student now.

 

Azrael looked at a loss for words, and Tom was so terribly angry, because Azrael must have known that Tom had never belonged their either and yet here they were just pretending again. It was a hesitant gesture, shaking and slow, but Azrael pulled Tom into his arms even with the imprint of Tom’s hand on his face.

 

“You have so much potential, Tom, I doubt you yourself even realize it. Potential is a terrifying thing, because it is not reality, and yet we must grasp at it while we can because it is all that we are. You are more than your faded visions and attending Hogwarts will not change that fact. Go to Hogwarts, Tom, take your NEWTs, don’t be deterred simply because you don’t have a plan yet. I may not be there, sitting next to you, but I am never truly gone from this world. Should you truly need me I will be there, my friend.”

 

The words were not empty, Azrael truly felt them, but even so standing in Azrael’s arms they rang hollow in Tom’s ears.

 

* * *

 

Tom Riddle did not personally attend the Potsdam Conference, his imaginings of the event were a derivation of his knowledge of Azrael as well as later published recollections.

 

The importance, in history, would not only be that it marked the settlements of the war but also that it was the first appearance of the Emperor of Ubik.

 

He did know that the day Azrael had attended he had worn the face of an emperor, worn clothing was replaced with a sleeker looking black fabric, in the right hand he held a crystal scepter that seemed to almost glow, and on his head a crow of stars was woven into his dark hair. He had stood in Tom’s bedroom for a few moments, the sunlight catching both crown and scepter and it almost seemed as if he truly were a god.

 

He had been alarming, riddling, cryptic and much himself at the conference if transcripts and various documented impressions were to be believed. He had strode in uninvited to the meeting between Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt and others as if he had been expected in the first place. All agreed that he was uncanny, unnerving, and that even with his youthful features no one sought to question just how old he was. When questioned on who he worked for, who he was, and why he had interfered in the first place he had only this to say.

 

“I am sovereign of a nation that is very far from yours or any others and thus wars like yours are hardly my people’s business under normal circumstances. However, while war is depravity genocide is abomination; this world war of yours has bred monsters and my people could not stand by and simply watch as you burned yourselves to ashes. You have crippled yourselves for the sake of nationalism and it was time to stop such petty games.”

 

He introduced himself as the Emperor of a nation called Ubik, a country they were unlikely to have heard of.

 

Other details of the conference would be glossed over, dealing with Germany, the occupied nations, the Emporer of Ubik only dealt partly in them preferring to keep to himself in most dealings.

 

It was hypothesized then, and not refuted later, that Ubik was a very advanced nation to have the hidden technologies capable of making their emperor appear on the battlefield like a god. The nation of Ubik itself would come to be the focus of much speculation academic and otherwise. Off the record and behind closed doors it was rare to hear when the emperor’s mortal status wasn’t called into question.

 

When Tom thought on the conference he did not always linger on the image of the God Emperor Azrael of Ubik, stars in his hair and light in his hand, but rather he thought of the name of the nation Azrael had made up that day whose name’s meaning he had told Tom when he had returned exhausted in the middle of the night.

 

“Ubik, is that a word from that language you speak?” Tom had asked after hearing a summarization of the day’s events as well as the name of the nation Azrael had chosen to represent.

 

He had shaken his head no with a fond smile, “No, it’s English, of a kind. Ubik, is short for ubiquitous.”

 

In standing behind the decision of the people of Ubik Azrael had claimed to stand behind them all. It made future opinions on the nature heavily ironic in a way that was as bittersweet as it was humorous and Tom would always find himself suppressing laughter at the erroneous assumptions on the great empire of Ubik. There had only ever been Azrael and an unspoken plea to end the massacre.

 

* * *

 

Azrael was kind enough not to disappear without warning that summer. On September first he accompanied Tom to the train where they stared at the machine with dull eyes ignoring the way it glittered with promise as all wizarding things did. Tom had grown immune to the fool’s gold that was Wizarding Britain and now it only seemed cheap in his eyes.

 

“So while I’m off at school you’ll be emperor of your made up country.” Tom said drily unpleased with the turn of events, the anger still simmered inside him but it was no longer overflowing, he found himself resigned to the situation more than anything. It seemed tragically fitting, that Azrael would make himself an emperor in a matter of a few months while Tom would still be a school boy.

 

No, he found that at this point he was more annoyed than anything else. Azrael hadn’t seemed to notice, or he couldn’t bring himself to care, at any rate he was acting like his usual self not the least bit put out by Tom’s lack of enthusiasm.

 

“Perhaps, there have been many attempts to find it, both to visit and otherwise. I’ll have to find somewhere suitable to place it.” Azrael said with a shrug before glancing at Tom, “You’ll do well, you always do.”

 

“Of course.” Tom said, there had never been any doubt of his success, Tom had always been more than capable of handling Hogwarts. He still had his prefect’s badge, his perfect results from the OWLs, as well as Slughorn’s glowing opinion of him. Tom was as suited to Hogwarts as he had ever been, even with the skeleton of a Basilisk discarded in the basement.  

 

“You will have to see it yourself, my made up country of Ubik.” Azrael smiled at him and Tom was oddly reminded of the invitation all those years ago on the rooftop of the school. He remembered how small that pale hand had been, reaching for his, and yet he had taken it all the same in order to capture starlight. Years later standing in front of a train it almost seemed as if no time had passed at all.

 

“Yes, I suppose I will.”

 

Later, looking out the window of the train, he would see Azrael standing as a stray shadow amid the wizards with one hand raised in a slight wave his eyes locked with Tom’s until the train had pulled out of the station.

 

There was something so inherently wrong with the idea of him at the station and Tom on the train but the train approached Scotland regardless and the world somehow kept spinning on a slightly tilted axis.


	15. Chapter 15

Ubik proved to live up to its name, even among wizards it was ubiquitous.

 

As he had suspected while wizards were quite self-centered they were hardly stupid. The god-like emperor of Ubik was said to wear black as the man who had removed Grindlewald with an incredible act of magic had.

 

However, although the put two and two together most failed to get four.

 

They thought he was a wizard, a muggle hating power hungry madman who discarded the statute of secrecy as if it were garbage and spat in the faces of all wizards so that he might play at being God.

 

In school Tom would often find himself catching tail ends of conversations between students of all houses, on the wizard Ubik and what an arrogant monster he must be to take advantage of the muggles like that or how he was the greatest of fools for attempting to seize power over a people who meant nothing. They never considered the idea that Ubik and its emperor were exactly what Azrael had stated them to be and that Ubik did not consider itself a nation of wizards or intend to deal with wizards at all.

 

Their self-interest, as usual, blinded them.

 

Sometimes Tom found himself testing the limits of these beliefs and to see where the faith stopped for most wizards.

 

In Azrael’s absence Tom had found himself picking up hobbies he considered rather odd. They weren’t as violent as killing rats, lighting things on fire, or using a basilisk to depopulate the school but they weren’t as healthy as reading books either. One of them was tormenting Minerva McGonagall in their shared NEWT Transfiguration course. Although tormenting was perhaps the wrong word, as was harassment, it was more like provoking. There was no real need for it nor did he find it all that enjoyable but time had become very slow for him and he found himself doing rather pointless things simply to whittle away at it.

 

Ennui was a very curious shade of apathy for Tom Riddle.

 

“What do you think of this Ubik business, McGonagall?” He asked in his new position in the seat next to hers, a situation she had initially not objected to, but one she seemed to regret now that it had been a few weeks and he had not been quite as pleasant as she’d originally thought. Their first class that year he’d brought up the blatant logical fallacies in the game of quidditch and their relationship had never been the same since.

 

He could tell, simply by the look on her face as well as the stiffness in her shoulders, that she always loathed the moment they both finished their work and Tom was free to start a conversation.

 

“He’s breaking the statue of secrecy, quite blatantly.” She said managing to look offended by the mere question, Tom’s eyebrows raised slightly, he wondered if he should bring up Azrael’s words on the statue of secrecy. Some might consider Tom the more offensive and opinionated of the pair of them but really once you got past the poetry and eloquence Azrael was far more offensive to these people. It was a pity none of them had ever listened when he was actually in the school. 

 

“He’s never claimed to be a wizard, as far as the muggles are concerned he’s the only one of his kind, whatever his kind may be.” Tom said instead.

 

“He used magic in front of muggles!” She said sharply before trying to rise above it all with deep calming breaths. Tom watched this with raised eyebrows knowing that she knew better by now, controlling her sharp temper was not one of Minerva McGonagall’s stronger points.

 

“Yes, but he doesn’t appear to be European either, we’ve never heard of this nation of Ubik and thus even if it is a magical country they did not enter into the international statue of secrecy created centuries ago. As a nation magical Britain, nor any other magical country, has no sovereignty over Ubik.”

 

“Then he shouldn’t have done magic in front of muggles over here either!” She said but judging by the look on her face she couldn’t picture a nation in which there was no statue of secrecy, she only saw the witches burning, “People must respect our traditions and keep out of our business.”

 

“When in Rome do as the Romans do?” Tom asked curiously before adding in a musing tone, “Of course, had he kept out of our business as you put it then Grindlewald would most likely be marching to London with all of England burning behind him. How many lives is respect for tradition worth at the end of the day, McGonagall?”

 

That question she didn’t appear to have an answer to.

 

As it was Dumbledore chose that time to approach their table, as he usually did towards the end of these discussions, looking at Tom with a glare as he supposedly attempted to charm and seduce one of Dumbledore’s favored students. He always missed the fact that Minerva McGonagall looked unnerved, upset, and sometimes on the verge of tears by the end of these conversations.

 

“Trouble, Mr. Riddle?”

 

Tom smiled cheerily up at the professor with that optimistic and light hearted expression Slughorn so loved and Dumbledore so loathed, “Oh no sir, Minerva and I were merely discussing the current political climate, it’s all quite fascinating.”

 

And indeed it truly was because from pureblood to mudblood they all harbored the same opinion as the Daily Prophet, in looking for Ubik they overlooked the muggles completely, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Azrael was hearing their outraged cries in whatever desolate wasteland he had decided to erect his nation.

 

Tom thought that he probably did, that he heard it quite clearly, but like usual he chose to ignore the sounds of it. That window between him and humanity was still in place even if it was no longer tinted.

 

Of course, so far there was no movement only the discontented cries of a public denied catharsis in their petty war. Ubik was not yet a place, it had no traditions, no history, no geographic location, it was only an idea and a man in black with stars on his brow. To think that such small insubstantial things could inspire the raging inferno that was nationalism.

 

At night, when the time seemed to stretch beyond limit into the horizon, Tom would raise an imaginary glass to his missing comrade in his empty dorm room, “To the honor and glory of Ubik.”

 

* * *

 

Soon enough Slughorn approached him about what he wished to accomplish in life.

 

It occurred at the beginning of his sixth year as it did with all students looking to take their various NEWT courses and prepare themselves for future careers. Tom had been expecting it but it had been a distant expectation, always in the back of his mind as he scanned newspapers in the mornings for hints of Azrael and thought on the concepts of magic, so when he found himself one of many students summoned to Slughorn’s office he was mildly surprised that it had happened so soon.

 

So there he was, the sixteen year old Tom Riddle, in his second hand robes wearing a more distant and bored expression than he would have allowed himself in past years and Slughorn sitting behind his desk staring across at him.

 

“Now, Tom, my boy you are so very talented, in all your subjects.” Slughorn said smiling at Tom but with less warmth than had been there in the days before Tom’s adamant refusal to participate in the Slug Club, “If you would simply connect more with other people, your peers in this house even then by the age of thirty, you, Tom could be minister of magic.”

 

Tom had wanted to point out that by the age of fifteen Azrael the dropout Hufflepuff had become a God Emperor of an advanced magical civilization but it seemed rude.

 

Instead Tom smiled cheerfully; an expression that seemed harder to produce recently as if more effort was involved to play these games required of him, “Of course, professor, but I’m afraid I’m not very interested in politics.”

 

Slughorn looked vaguely disappointed, perhaps he had been hoping for a powerful alumni about whom he could share recollections to future students. He should have looked relieved, until very recently Tom had been interested in politics, and he doubted Slughorn would have appreciated Lord Voldemort’s efforts and improving the nation.

 

How was it that all these meetings he had with Slughorn were so heavily laced with irony? He could almost drown in the bitterness of thoughts and words unspoken and yet they always smiled back at each other.

 

“Well, no matter, there are plenty of opportunities for a young man like you.” Slughorn said leaning back in his chair and attempting to think of these glowing opportunities no doubt still caught in his fantasy of Tom the minister, “There’s mastery of course, from what I hear about you in Defense you’d make a very impressive auror, there’s curse breaking, rune development… Really all kinds of opportunities for a young intelligent man like yourself.”

 

Tom had thought vaguely about his plans for the future, he still felt adrift, and with Azrael’s recent developments he felt more cast off. Predefined roles like auror or even dark lord seemed rather petty and so terribly human at the end of the day. He had thought in his more desperate moments to perhaps become an Unspeakable, the government funded researchers, and find his answer to immortality and the secrets of the universe in that manner. The idea of losing his face, of becoming another secret of the government, a government he was growing to loathe a little more with each passing year was unacceptable to him. Tom had become an expatriate the day Dippet had told him that Hogwarts could not be bothered to save him from the bombs raining on London he had simply not come to terms with it then.

 

Whatever future awaited Tom, whatever ‘research’ muttered in a half dreaming state by a man who wove stars into his hair, it would not be found in magical Britain.

 

The only question now was where he should go instead.

 

In that office the answer appeared to him because he had most likely known it all along, he had once followed Azrael onto the roof of Hogwarts with only a hand outstretched to his for guidance, it had changed his life. There was no reason he could not take that hand again.

 

“Perhaps I will go into politics.” Tom said to Slughorn’s delight, the man clapping and prattling on about the connections Tom would need to make and the club meetings he simply most attend. 

 

A nation like Ubik, unknown and advanced as it was, could not be simply left on its own. Ambassadors would be needed to represent England’s interests, it was only reasonable.

 

* * *

 

Azrael wouldn’t respond to Tom’s letters until December. Tom couldn’t remember how many he sent, most of them had been filled with drivel or else one or two sentences, they were sent mostly for the feel of sending them than anything else. It was a reassurance, a small notion to himself, that Azrael was not truly gone just as he had said at the station that just because he was elsewhere did not mean he had disappeared entirely. He always felt more than a little relieved after sending them and it was sad that he was too far gone to let such weakness bother him.

 

It had become a habit, sending letters to the missing Azrael, something to pass the time whenever emotions began to nag and that sense of purposelessness seeped into his bones.

 

He described Hogwarts, the wariness with which it treated Ubik as well as the relief at Grindlewald’s disappearance, the nation was on edge though not quite willing to settle into peace but by no means willing to engage in a war with a man who had defeated the German dark lord in a matter of seconds. Everyone was still waiting for the dice to fall, that was the truth of it.

 

He wrote briefly on Dumbledore’s lost expression, still looking out the window towards France, only this time with darker looks as if something had been left incomplete out there. The man had become more distracted since Grindlewald’s appearance and more so since his disappearance. Students like Tom and even his more favored students like Minerva McGonagall were all more distant to the man now lost as he was in his own thoughts.

 

Mostly he wrote his own thoughts though, replacing Azrael for the journal that sat unused since the basilisk incident in Tom’s trunk. He wrote about books and magic and the slow trickle of time that seemed so different than before he had known Azrael; about the ticking of clocks marking the passage of frames and light. The wandless lessons, after much contemplation, were finally coming together in his head so that magic like light leaked from his fingertips and into the greater universe.

 

Upon reflection he realized that he had been too young when he had asked for those lessons in wandless magic all those years ago from the strange Hufflepuff Azrael. He had been driven, intelligent, and determined but he had lacked the ability to step back and view the grand scheme of things. He rushed to build palaces in his head on pillars of salt and sand not caring if they collapsed beneath his feet before they were even begun.

 

Everything was in transmutation, a half completed act of Transfiguration, light and matter intermingling until nothing at all was as set as it appeared to be. Magic was the ability to close one’s eyes and still see the universe stretching beyond closed lids and to know that power rested somewhere beyond the words and the hands where only the mind could interact.

 

After those first few months of sixth year he had almost stopped expecting a response, it had seemed unnecessary anyway, whenever he closed his eyes Azrael’s pale face stared back at him always there in Tom’s head. It had been something of a shock when a plain envelope arrived in front of him at breakfast along with the Prophet and collection of muggle papers. Tom, it said in plain undecorated writing that had once been scribbled across papers and notes.

 

For a moment, staring at it, he felt like a love sick school boy at the way his heart stuttered and it made him more than a little ashamed.

 

His feelings for Azrael, since their grand appearance in his fifth year, had yet to dissipate or change back into what they had been before that time. One way or another he was always thinking of Azrael, sometimes abstractly, and sometimes when dreaming as a very physical concept. He knew the taste of obsession, he’d had it before with Voldemort like liquor on his tongue, but it had never seemed so repulsive to him. In the recent year though, with his absence, Tom had become resigned to his own emotions until it took effort to contemplate them as something alien. He allowed his thoughts to wander from class to the color of Azrael’s eyes in a darkened room and the feeling of him lying next to him in a too small bed. These things became small distractions in the dull monotony that was Hogwarts so even as he balked at himself he couldn’t help but feel grateful for the change.

 

Sometimes he wondered if Azrael knew, he never was sure, Azrael was so distant it was hard to tell anything he was thinking. He supposed he could ask, he couldn’t remember Azrael ever having lied to him directly, obfuscated and misdirected certainly but not lied. However to ask seemed to be to acknowledge, more than that, to dangle himself on the whims of another being who could cut out his heart with only a word; Tom had no interest in that.

 

He opened the letter and attempted to ignore his own jumbled feelings of anticipation and warmth that accompanied it.

 

He’d taken a page from Tom, Azrael’s letters usually were almost incomprehensible, not always long but usually more pointless rambles in philosophy than anything else and rarely divulging in personal details. The few lines he had written though were uncharacteristically blunt and to the point but even so Tom could picture Azrael’s hand behind the words.

 

_I’ve found a place in which to place my imaginary country, if you wish to visit for the holidays simply meet me at the station in London._

 

Brief and uninformative as it was it still brought more of a smile to Tom’s face than most things could.


	16. Chapter 16

He barely stepped from the station before a pale hand reached for his and spirited them away from London as if he had never stepped foot into King’s Cross at all. There was no greeting, no time even to view his face, and all of a sudden the world was in such chaotic spin that Tom was not certain what to make of it. He was lost, confounded, nauseous in his confusion as lights twirled in his eyes and he could feel space rushing everywhere and nowhere and suddenly he was somewhere else entirely and everything was still.

 

It was a quiet place, white snow piled on the ground and on the peaks of distant mountains, ancient trees with light glowing like flower buds at the tips of their branches surrounding them; stretching towards the sky with thin white branches. Before him was a lake and though it was winter on the surface flowers were blooming, all imaginable colors before him giving a slight soft glow. None of these things, even given their more magical appearances, had been in their shared Herbology class.

 

His only thought that this quiet surreal palace that Azrael has built for himself, it was very him, this Ubik.

 

“I imagined less snow.”, and he turned to see the still black clad Azrael, who had forgone the scepter and the stars of in his hand and remained the same Azrael that had left him at the station in London before school had started again. He had never looked like a schoolboy, not like Tom sometimes appeared, but all the same he looked familiar and the sight of him was a welcoming one that eased something in him.

 

I am home, he thought.

 

Later, lying on their backs and staring at the stars, a reflection of that first true meeting between them all those years ago, Azrael pointed to a particularly blue light in the sky, “Earth,” He said with a slight uncertain note to his voice as if not quite sure how this would be received, “Burns very pale tonight.”

 

Turning his head from the sky to look at green eyes he had found no hint of a lie in them, nothing but the void of light and shadows staring back at him from their depths, and he had found that he believed it without explanation of any kind.

 

So it was that Azrael found land unclaimed and untamed, had left and said not quite let there be light, but let there be some semblance of life and had left Earth entirely for its distant red cousin the eye of war, Mars.

 

“You’ve probably thrown off all manner of divination for the centaurs.” Tom commented, ignoring the wonder and fear and non-understanding of being on an alien world whose only life was a man who was not a man and the plant life he had created from himself.

 

“Undoubtedly they are cursing my very name.” Azrael said in acknowledgement that wry twist to his words, his own odd brand of humor, coming to the surface.

 

There was a pause here as Tom considered the being he would consider his only friend and he wondered if it was warranted to wonder if Azrael was never from Earth to begin with. Not simply not human, not simply different, but completely alien to the planet so that he would always be foreign no matter his context. Amidst the snow, the pale trees, the bright glowing flowers drifting on the lake as if they were stars Azrael did not look odd, he did not have his jarring air, instead he blended into this world where spring and winter intermingled until they were some conglomeration of the two.

 

No, instead it was Tom, in wizard’s robes and a green and silver tie, loosely holding a branch of Yew with a phoenix feather inside that was the outsider here. It was an alarming thought.

 

“Was this always here?” He asked and Azrael simply looked back at him, that ineffable stare he sometimes wore, that hid his thoughts so very well until Tom could only catch a glimpse of them.

 

“No, Tom, it wasn’t.”

 

It was implied but not stated that in only a few months Azrael had created this for himself with only his thoughts, his hands, and a wand he had recently picked up travelling about Europe. Still though, it did answer one question, Azrael whatever he was apparently was not a Martian.

 

There were no people on Ubik, no semblance of civilization; it lacked the homes, storefronts, or even buildings that marked humanity on Earth. It was cold, colder than England was, but not unreasonably so and a heating charm was more than sufficient to counter it but even so that very mist appearing from his breath made the place only seem more unfamiliar even as it sought to imitate Earth.

 

Walking away from the lake and through the surrounding forest Azrael, summoning a bright light similar to something produced by _lumos_ in his hand, explained what had been going on outside of Hogwarts in surprisingly blunt and comprehensive words.

 

“People have been asking to visit, of course, some have even asked to immigrate knowing nothing about the place save that I live there. Germany is not quite the mess that it could have been, torn in half with a wall in the center of Berlin, but it is not the pinnacle of stability either. The Eastern European countries that had been invaded are hardly in better shape. Many of the expatriates, physicists, refugees, and others have looked to Ubik for answers… It doesn’t matter than I am a figure of mystery, perhaps it is because I am a figure of mystery, but in looking at me they find a way to shift and change and not be what they were.” He frowned at the end of this, as if he didn’t quite approve of this mindset but didn’t know the words to refute it, as if he understood but couldn’t quite bring himself to sympathize completely.

 

He concluded after a sigh as if compartmentalizing his thoughts, “I decided that you should be the first to see it, before I start setting up transportation systems and all that other nonsense.”

 

Walking in the silence, the only sound the crunching of their feet through the woods, Tom wondered if Azrael was so different that he could not feel the inherent unease that kind of overwhelming solitude could bring. It was one thing to be alone in a building, it was quite another to be alone in a world.

 

“You need buildings.” He said finally, motioning to the trees before them, beautifully crafted but horrifically silent, “New, different, exotic, ubiquitous if you will, but there has to be buildings; you need human structure.”

 

Azrael blinked, a sign of his surprise, but Tom didn’t stop stepping forward and using his hands to paint his vision onto the wilderness that was Ubik, “There needs to be some semblance of culture, you kept referencing your people, and your culture and you’ve certainly captured that with the costume but there needs to be more, we need the feeling of history, of something human. This isn’t convincing, in fact it’s not simply unconvincing it’s unnerving.”

 

He stopped and turned to look at Azrael who was looking at him with almost a bemused expression, “What?” He asked rather sharply.

 

“You’re more enthused than I am, perhaps it should have been you who created a nation from ideas and dust.”

 

Perhaps, he wondered if Lord Voldemort would have enjoyed creating rather than reshaping a country, of making something from nothing. It seemed like an idea that was too long term for Voldemort, it lacked the blood and fire and anarchy of revolution, in Lord Voldemort he had been venting his anger, disappointment, and frustration and all that seemed absent in the idea of making something new.

 

Tom hardly resented this fact though, it only remained as an observation in his head, and he couldn’t help but wonder at how inconsequential that overwhelming vision of the future had become.

 

It was only that this place, this Ubik, reminded him that Azrael was as wild and ineffable as the land he had created. Tom looked at him and knew him better than anyone ever would, but he could not touch him, and the part of him that always thought on Azrael and knew the exact color of his eyes and curve of his jaw shuttered closed at that thought as if he had wilted or collapsed on himself.

 

In presenting Ubik to the world, to give it human mannerisms and an ability to connect, Azrael would come with it. That was what he couldn’t help but think in that moment.

 

* * *

 

He spent the holidays with Azrael. The thought of checking in with the orphanage crossed his mind occasionally but he had more or less come to accept that he would never return there even while underage.

 

Mrs. Cole would mark it up to him running away and then she’d drink some more of the scotch hidden under the desk and there would be new children to reprimand and mind who weren’t devil children like Tom had been. As for the children themselves they would not rejoice at his absence, he hadn’t been present enough, but as he failed and continued to fail to reappear they would breathe a sigh of relief and slowly but surely move Tom Riddle to the edge of their memories where he would remain a thing of nightmares. Perhaps he would always stand tall in the minds of Dennis, Amy, and Billy but really what were three children in the scheme of things?

 

So he sent no letters back even after Azrael had implied it was a possibility and instead focused his time and energies on creating the nation of Ubik.

 

Azrael was right, Tom was surprisingly enthused. It was an interesting idea, he’d found, creating an entire fictional world that had through magic and miracles transcended into reality. Far more interesting of an idea than dark magic, the restricted section, or British magical politics; become minister Slughorn had said as if that was the height of ambition. Ah, but professor, why become a minister when you can become a god?

 

Again with that air of bemusement, a small smile transfixed on his lips, Azrael had lent him paper and an ear as Tom had designed architecture and clothing only interrupting here and there to add or subtract the odd comments.

 

“Why have it be so cold?” He’d asked at one point in designing the buildings, runes to continually heat were drawn into the architecture, and while it would work it would be much easier on everyone if Mars were just a little warmer. Even Tom, who had been nowhere but England, could appreciate a bit of sunlight.

 

“Well, it is farther from the sun so there’s always that.” Azrael had commented again with that expression like he found Tom vaguely funny just by the intensity of his expression and how seriously he took this, “I did make it warmer than it was, the atmosphere alone accomplishes that, but Tom Ubik is not paradise. It isn’t meant to be paradise, there must be some aspects that remain unpleasant, unwelcoming or else even I begin to doubt its existence.”

 

So Ubik remained, welcoming but not too welcoming, having a culture that was vaguely similar to Earth’s but also extremely different with script on the doorways written in light in a language that only Azrael was aware of.

 

They built a transit center, a circular building with a clear roof and a portal of light in the center that Azrael claimed acted a bit like a portkey, “I suppose Star Trek doesn’t exist yet but it runs in roughly the same manner as that, you simply ask to beamed up or beamed down and there you are.”

 

They built a library, filled instantaneously with books already written, hundreds of thousands of books appearing out of nothingness onto hexagonal walls in thousands of languages and on thousands of topics. That had been jarring, standing in that great building, at the empty walls and suddenly seeing them fill and the walls grow as books upon books simply appeared.

 

They built living quarters, places of residence for those who visited and those who stayed, they plotted out farm land. They quartered and divided Ubik as they saw fit and the wilderness grew around them and in between them always somehow untamed.

 

It was only when he brought up the issue of people that Azrael refused to play along.

 

“Ubikians, ubiquitous people, will be expected and people will be alarmed and disturbed when none appear and it is only you.”

 

It had been after they had finished most of the buildings, Azrael leaning against the pale blue stone with a distant expression as if he had been drained somehow, it was hardly surprising as he’d been doing the heavy magical lifting so to speak. Tom had seen him work before but he had never realized how little he had seen, small bits of light, Transfiguration in class, but he had not seen this sheer ability to create from nothingness. Perhaps he had glimpsed it, in a cake, but he had never truly seen it.

 

He must have looked so dangerous on the battlefield so terrible and glorious and great all in the same moment.

 

“I will not create life.” His eyes flashed and in them Tom saw something final and not human; an indomitable will that could not be conquered by persuasion, force, or any other human means.

 

He did not say that he was not capable of creating life, merely that he wouldn’t, that was more telling than Tom liked to think.

 

Tom just looked at him, this pale not-boy that he was, tall but not as tall as Tom leaning against a building and staring out into the distant orange of the sunset. In his eyes red was reflected until that distinctive green color was almost washed out.

 

“I have decided to become magical Britain’s ambassador to Ubik, because ambassadors will be needed, not just from the wizarding countries but from all of them. This is a nation, Azrael, you can’t simply expect it to remain empty.”

 

“I expect to be the godhead, the figurehead, the emperor but not the king.” He said with a wan smile and his hands upturned, “I have very few rules, they can come, they can stay, no matter who they are or where they come from that is the meaning of ubiquitous after all. If they ask for my help, if they need my help, I will provide it. I am an idea Tom, not a person, and that means I have different liberties and different short-comings.”

 

That statement should have been more surprising than it was, I am an idea, but it wasn’t. Azrael spoke in metaphors, in riddles, in parables and tales and that was no doubt another. Still, “I am an idea, not a person” that should have been more alarming than it was. It only made him pause, for just a moment, and look at him and utterly fail to see anything but Azrael.

 

It was almost Christmas and Tom Riddle was on Mars with a being that was an idea but not human and was turning into something more powerful and terrible than Tom had ever considered possible.

 

Surrealism was seeping into his very bones, it seemed, and he wondered where it stopped.

 

He didn’t bring the topic up again and the beautiful buildings remained empty and devoid of people, the books left untouched.

 

* * *

 

They came after Tom departed for Hogwarts, the physicists, the immigrants, those who had no home left to go to and those who desperately did not wish to return to where they were. The desperate and suffering refugees of a war left finished and unfinished in the same moment.

 

Ubik, Tom realized, didn’t exist primarily so that people would abuse Azrael’s image. Ubik existed for them, for these exiled Germans, Poles, Slavs, and all the others who had been left in the squares of their defeated cities wondering where you went after the concentration camps.

 

The scientists were curious; Azrael had presented himself as an advanced unknown nation after all. One who casually referenced advancements made recently in physics and advancements that had yet to be made as if they were each as well-worn and known as the next. After they arrived and realized, somehow, impossibly that Ubik was not on Earth at all and that the bending of the space time continuum was more than possible it was more than a little hard to get them to leave. After them many academics followed. Some stayed, having become expatriates of their own countries during the war and sickened by the recent events on Earth, some returned to their own universities inspired by their findings.

 

For those who did return or those whose works would trickle down to Earth they all agreed that the emperor, while highly intelligent, was also more than a little difficult to understand and used more poetic language than anything technical. Tom sympathized completely.

 

As for the immigrants, most were Jews, though not all. He supposed it was to be expected given the events of the war and the apparent abominations that had occurred, Tom being an orphan had spared little thought for these different ethnicities but he supposed that if he had been Jewish, or if Grindlewald had invaded England as promised and disposed of the muggleborns like rats then he would be disinclined to return to his country of origin when it was all over as well.

 

Jews, it seemed, were the mudbloods of the muggle world.

 

More than that though there had been rumors that he was the messiah or at the very least a prophet, and descending as he had and doing what he did Tom did not find it an unreasonable assumption. So it had seemed almost heresy for them not to partake in a second exodus and leave Earth behind for another, newer, promised land with a name they had never heard of before.

 

Most of the details Tom would accumulate later in life, when he had time to look back through articles and documents, it was the barest of summaries that he would have at the time in Hogwarts. Still, he remembered noting that in the end Azrael had been right, the lack of people present had been less haunting to the visitors than Tom had assumed it would be.

 

They hadn’t needed any native Ubikians, any Martians as it was, it was only Tom who had stood and stared alone into the wilderness and thought, “I am a stranger in a strange land.”

 

Something about that thought, resounding in his head during classes as he played the part of schoolboy, left him hollow.

 

It was as if he had never left that train on the first day of school, with a stranger staring back at him from a boy’s body, and between them there had been galaxies unseen and untouched.


	17. Chapter 17

In his seventh year he was made Head Boy but it was not the joyous occasion of achievement his professors had originally expected of him, it was not obvious to make Tom Riddle Head Boy, instead it was for lack of a better alternative. Excellent grades, attitude, record as a prefect, but he was no longer the outstanding student he had been.

 

Distracted was a term many of them used and they were not wrong in that opinion.

 

Instead it was Minerva McGonagall, who had saved the school in her fifth year, who was thinking of apprenticing herself to Albus Dumbledore after Hogwarts that became the pride and joy of the school; the next great wizard or in his case witch.

 

She smiled but you could tell she was uncomfortable with the attention; she did not bask in the glow of the attention as he once had, when she walked into a room she did not dominate it but rather looked almost overwhelmed by it. She looked as if she wasn’t quite sure she could live up to her reputation or even if she wanted to.

 

As for himself, Tom Riddle, in spite of his continuing excellence academically, began to seem just a little less bright to both his peers and his professors. The lingering Slug Club invitations that he had routinely turned down stopped altogether, the house points awarded for work came in less and less frequently, and the professors no longer beamed quite as much when they spoke of his work.

 

Just as he had left the orphanage with no intention of returning Tom had more or less left Hogwarts and made his way to Ubik. He spent in his time in the library or else the Head Boy’s quarters with piles and piles of books, not from Hogwarts’ library, but rather borrowed from Azrael and his kingdom in the stars.

 

Amongst those who had come to live in Ubik while Tom had been away that first winter, who stared at him, neither muggle intellectual nor war abused refugee, with slight confusion, there were rumors that the library of Ubik was infinite and that if you could read all the languages in the world and the few that only the emperor himself knew and searched through all the books you would find your own destiny written in one of them. The rooms, hexagonal and overlapping, did appear overwhelming and he had never wandered through the entire library but he had always felt this was a bit of an exaggeration. Or perhaps, more accurately, he needed it to be an exaggeration. I must stop somewhere, Azrael had told him with such human desperation that it was alarming, and Tom did not like the idea of an infinite Azrael any more than Azrael himself did.

 

As it was Tom confined himself to the English section and from there to subjects he knew something about, which turned out to be in the great scheme of things very little.

 

He had known, of course, that the magic he knew encompassed only a small fraction of knowledge but he had not realized how worthless subjects like Potions, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts really were. There were books in Azrael’s library with those names, that could be found with a search engine designed sometime during Tom’s absence, but the stack was very small and in comparison to the world housed in the library seemed terribly insignificant.

 

Being still under the Statute of Secrecy and not quite willing to blatantly disregard it as Azrael had he did not approach the numerous physicists that had been studying there that first summer, many expatriates from Germany or else having come from something in America called the Manhattan Project, but he suspected that if he had and had discussed magical academia with them they would have told him that only Transfiguration, a subject they called Quantum Mechanics or more generally Particle Physics, was really of any interest.

 

It was less distressing than the first time, when there had been nothing, only life and Azrael and the night sky with Earth barely more than a bright blue dot in the sky. Buildings, people, and books had helped to round out the alien feel but at the same time each time he saw Azrael and his country of wishes and light he felt so terribly small.

 

He still went, he wrote continually, sketched buildings to be created, common place issues to be tackled such as irrigation and farming, whenever he had the time and often when he didn’t his thoughts went into designing this planet in the stars in such a way that it was efficient and beautiful all at once.

 

The better ones he sent to Azrael, thick sheets of paper folded into an overstuffed envelope and then simply wished away to Ubik (Azrael had decided that having the owls somehow fly toMars and back again was a bit much even with magic), most however remained stored in notebooks in the way he had once stored journal entries.

 

His answer to immortality was more and less difficult to find than he had assumed it would be. He had always thought it would be dramatic, a great act of dark magic, perhaps an ancient Mayan ritual that would suck the soul of a virgin out of her body and stuff it into his throat. Something that didn’t necessarily require a lot of thought but required a near infinite amount of power and had suitable special effects to go with it.

 

Having seen Azrael create buildings from nothing, inscribe light and words into the walls, he began to believe this vision was more than a little inaccurate.

 

Power was subtle, it was the breath, it existed whether it was worshipped or not. It was in the instant, a moment caught in time, when there was nothing before and suddenly there was something. There were no grand displays of light or magic associated with it, only that single focused feeling for an instant, and then the act in itself.

 

Dark magic would not be his answer, magic in general would not be his answer, as he had only guessed as a twelve year old the answer lied in Azrael and his own brand of magic rather than anything taught in school.

 

He doubted it was something he could simply be told either, the answer, whatever it was would come from himself and his own thoughts and nothing else. So he didn’t read on immortality, instead he sat, and thought and as the man Einstein who currently sat in Ubik thought of trains and dreamed of out racing light on a sled Tom thought about time, change, and eternity stretching beyond even the universe.

 

An excellent student, his professors said in regards to him, simply distracted as of late.

 

* * *

 

Minerva McGonagall and he were not friends, they were casual acquaintances, and both being good students occasionally partners on various assignments but they were far from being friends. At least, that was what Tom thought of the whole thing.

 

Tom had only one friend and he was an alien who lived on Mars and called himself an emperor; when you had a friend like that Tom felt there really wasn’t a need for a second one, even when she was Head Girl and supposedly responsible for stopping a slew of murders before they got started; even that reputation, small and British as it was, loomed over her head like the wave of a tsunami.

 

Minerva McGonagall apparently had a bit of a different opinion. When they had become Head Boy and Girl respectively it was as if they had gained some sort of kinship that they had almost had before but never truly claimed, they were both authority and wore it well enough but they didn’t necessarily like it.

 

She felt uncomfortable with the respect always feeling as if she didn’t deserve it, too often remembering the third year Hagrid being carted off to the Wizengamot and back with a broken wand between his large fingertips. Sometimes she’d spot him outside on the grounds, and she’d look only quickly at him before turning around and walking in the other direction, as if she hadn’t seen him at all. She went to the Slug Clubs, to her awards, and smiled cheerfully but she did not like it.

 

Tom had grown tired of being a Prefect and in turn being a Head Boy, the adoration of the masses had lost its appeal and he had become less enthused with humanity, particularly with wizarding Britain in general. Authority became a tedious affair of enforcing rules that held no substance and giving pride to a school that had little reason to be proud.

 

So it was in their seventh year when they were slumped together that she apparently forgave him for his blasphemous opinions about quidditch, Ubik, and various other topics and started seeking him out in the library.

 

Sometimes she could be more than a little obnoxious, especially since he’d occasionally catch that lovesick look in her eye that he had thought squashed out by their shared classes, but there were times when she brought up surprisingly interesting topics.

 

“You know I’m going to be studying under professor Dumbledore when we graduate.” She’d started one day, he’d been brushing up on his physics in the library when lo and behold there was Minerva McGonagall setting down her own pile of textbooks next to his and opening to the latest chapter to read for whatever NEWT essay needed to be done for the week.

 

“Yes, everyone’s very proud, you’ve never really liked professor Dumbledore though.” She commented in that brisk Scottish accent making even mundane commentary seem as if it was on some sort of a time table.

 

“No, I can’t say I ever have, the feeling is entirely mutual I’m afraid.” Tom drawled and perhaps it spoke to developments in McGonagall’s character that she did not immediately contradict him but instead thought over the fact that her mentor did not find Tom charming.

 

For an odd moment, looking at her, he wondered if she would believe a story of an old man lighting an orphan’s wardrobe on fire for effect.

 

“He has some interesting opinions, sometimes.” She said, not pausing over the word interesting but stressing it, as if to put some different meaning there in its place. Here Tom lowered the physics book and gave her his full attention.

 

McGonagall did not worship authority but she had high respect for it and more respect for competence, Dumbledore was admittedly both, and so over the years she had been not only his favorite student but he had been her favorite professor. Dumbledore could do no wrong in her presence, not when it came to harshness of grading, or his blatant favoritism towards the Gryffindor half of the room. It was a new development that she could address anything he said or did with concern in her eyes. 

 

“Does he?” Tom asked.

 

She paused for a few moments, the expression she got when contemplating their fifth year appearing on her face, and finally continued, “Of course you remember two years ago when…”

 

“I remember.”

 

Again that pause, this one more hurt, as if she had secretly come to the same conclusion all along but did not wish to approach it, “He doesn’t think Hagrid is responsible, that the spider was merely a coincidence.”

 

He had once made rules for himself regarding these incidents, though that journal was hidden somewhere in his room lost beneath other notebooks he remembered them well enough, but the experiment had ended in spring of that year and he couldn’t help but wonder if the rules still applied long after the fact. As it was no one had asked Tom’s opinion of the events at the time, he had only been the mudblood then after all, “It was the simplest explanation.”

 

“But not the correct one.” She filled in for him to which he shrugged.

 

“Occam’s Razor states that the simplest explanation is most often the correct one, but most often is not always.”

 

“Occam’s what?”

 

“Razor, it’s a muggle expression.” He said motioning to the books, she looked down at them and appeared to notice for the first time that they weren’t the books she was reading and with words she had never heard of before. Being a Gryffindor McGonagall was considered more tolerant of muggle-born culture than most but that did not mean she understood or tolerated muggles, she most likely believed that she did, but at the end of things dark and light wizards really only spent their time bickering about mudbloods and did not even bother to think of the mud they sprang from.

 

“Did he say who he thought it was?” Tom asked causing her to start slightly, breaking her from her thoughts.

 

“No, not directly, not… not exactly. Simply that Hagrid wasn’t…. Malicious enough to be responsible.”

 

Hagrid would not have written T.S. Eliot on the walls and condemned an entire school to death or petrification if they were lucky. She had never really believed Hagrid was guilty either, she had strongly suspected, she had relied upon the evidence she had at hand but she had not believed in her heart of hearts. He wondered if Dumbledore knew that he was twisting the knife in her heart by telling her suspicions that would only ever remain suspicions or if he planned to somehow send out his protégé to hunt down the missing culprit and bring him to justice, it was too bad that even the corpse of the basilisk in the basement had been stripped bare for parts. Of the Hogwarts Basilisk Experiment little evidence remained.

 

“He is rather old, you know, and highly opinionated.” Tom said, “A master at Transfiguration, certainly, but hardly a detective… Did you know that when we first met he lit my wardrobe on fire because I looked at him funny?”

 

She blinked and her mouth opened, “What?”

 

“It’s true, you can even ask him about it, but that’s all rather beside the point. You acted, you did what you felt you had to and you did not flinch, and that’s more than he or any other person in this school can say. Isn’t that what Gryffindor is all about, after all?”

 

Whether that was what Gryffindor was about or not didn’t come up, she took his reassurance as it was and left him to his reading while she did her assignments. Dumbledore occupied less and less space in his head, belonging to the category of Hogwarts and not stepping far beyond it, but even so he found his thoughts returning to the professor in the midst of his seventh year and wondering what he was doing with the pieces labeled Grindlewald, Azrael, and the Emperor of Ubik.

 

They were only thoughts though, he would not mull over them at the time, and once graduation occurred with record scores in his NEWTs and prospects for the future he would spare little thought to look back.

 

Still, every once in a while, it was interesting to ponder what it was that the accomplished wizard made of the world.

 

* * *

 

In Ubik, in early summer, the snow had melted and pale green grass took its place so that in the distant sunlight it seemed almost transparent. In the unclaimed wilderness of the planet, away from the capitol city where the immigrants and visitors had chosen to congregate; he suspected some part of Ubik would always look like this, untamed and untouchable, always just beyond reach.

 

There were mountains, flowers made of light so that even in the daylight they seemed to burn, and rivers as well so that it seemed as if it truly was the country of eternity instead of a place dreamed of only in an instant.

 

On the banks of one of the greater rivers he and Azrael watched the scenery with a bottle of fire whisky imported via Tom from Hogsmede. Beside them, off to the side and almost forgotten, rested Tom’s award for record NEWT scores and academic accomplishment at Hogwarts given to him at graduation by Headmaster Dippet.

 

“Graduated, at long last, I thought the day would never come.” Tom said lying on his back and staring at the sky, blue but somehow different from Earth’s blue, as if to remind the viewer that they weren’t home but somewhere entirely different where man was never meant to walk.

 

Azrael chuckled slightly and Tom didn’t have to look to know that the spark of humor was in his eyes, “I remember there was a time where you enjoyed your Hogwarts education, whatever happened to that, Tom?”

 

The Blitz had happened, then the war, and then Azrael but perhaps it was more than that. He had always wanted to believe in Hogwarts, to believe that the path out of the gutter was simple and laid out before him, that he was special but that he also belonged at the same time. Things would have been easier if Hogwarts had been all it promised, but it wasn’t, and so here Tom was only hours after his graduation on Mars with an emperor clad in black.

 

“I suppose, enjoyment is a strong term, Azrael.” He finally said with a sigh, “I did well enough, regardless.”

 

He turned to look at Azrael, in two years he hadn’t changed much, he didn’t look much taller than he had when he was fifteen and Tom doubted he would ever sport a beard. That agelessness, trapped in transition, just made him odder to look at as if had he been trapped at the age of twenty rather than fifteen it might have made him seem more human. As it was his features seemed to contradict himself, his childish grin and his eyes that seemed to bleed eons from them.

 

He had taken the day off as emperor to celebrate, not that he did much as the emperor, he was right when he had pronounced himself a figurehead rather than a ruler. From what Tom had heard on his return to Ubik Azrael had demanded that the immigrants form their own government, that he would do as they asked if he deemed it reasonable but that they would find their own ways to make decisions. On Earth he had given the impression of a monarch, more than a monarch a conqueror, one who rules supreme and is not questioned by his people but on Ubik the reality was quite different.

 

A council was formed and they made most of the day to day decisions sometimes going to Azrael for advice or for some implementation of technology they assumed might be possible. For the most part he spent his time talking to various people, answering questions, and creating wonders with his bare hands.

 

As it was Azrael hated responsibility, he loathed it entirely, when people looked to him for guidance or salvation he shuddered. He did what he felt he had to but having known him for as long as he did Tom knew that it wasn’t something he particularly enjoyed.

 

He was reported as taking several days off in a row every couple of months, disappearing into the unclaimed wilderness of Ubik, easily summoned by desperation or a wish but for the most part unreachable.

 

“You plan to return to England then, once the summer is over?” Azrael asked without expectation or inflection in his voice, as if Tom was perfectly free to do as he liked with or without Azrael’s opinion to hinder him. That soft vulnerable part of himself, the part that looked at Azrael and wanted so badly that it hurt, couldn’t help but tremble at Azrael’s apparent indifference.

 

He wanted to stay but he wouldn’t, he wasn’t quite English, he hadn’t been English for a long time but that did not mean he belonged in Ubik either. He supposed he could fit in well enough with the immigrants, the scientists and intellectuals as well as the refugees, but even among them he had jagged edges and such a very different background. It was like being an orphan again, before Hogwarts, and knowing that he didn’t fit and would never fit and trying to make the best of it without rage overtaking his senses. Only this time there was no Hogwarts to dangle in front of him like a shiny distraction there was only the lack of belonging caught between England and Ubik.

 

“Yes, I told you, I’m going to be the Magical British ambassador to Ubik.”

 

He didn’t want to see if there was disappointment or not in Azrael’s eyes, he didn’t look, and so he was spared the sight of perfect indifference that he might have found there.

 

“I see.” Azrael commented, “Tom, the British Ministry of Magic, I realize that you are not a fan of their politics but… Even I, Tom, am not a fan of their politics.”

 

“What is that supposed to mean?”

 

A fragile sort of hesitance made its way onto Azrael’s features as if he was conflicted on what exactly he wanted to say, finally he shrugged and motioned his hand towards the sky, “Be careful, I suppose is what I mean to say. It most likely will not be as pleasant as you think.”

 

He was not a Gryffindor, he lacked their bluntness, and perhaps even their courage. He liked to think that he could face the abyss and not flinch but he could not bring himself to ask if Azrael would rather he stay on Ubik instead. He only looked at him, wordlessly, and Azrael simply looked back with so many expressions in his eyes that Azrael could not tell them apart.

 

And the river rolled on, as if it had always been there, indifferent to the two young men on its bank and the ignored plaque of academic achievement resting next to them.


	18. Chapter 18

“Highly promising however… Mr. Riddle…” The ministry bureaucrat gave him a once over, inspecting his formal robes that had been transfigured into something resembling wealth, as if finding him somehow lacking. Tom simply stared back with his most carefully blank expression.

 

Passed over, he had forgotten how terribly easy it was for these ignorant mediocre useless people to pass over him as if he was dirt, as if somewhere on his forehead the word mudblood was written in such large garish letters that there was nothing left of him. Of course, he hadn’t really forgotten, he had always known, but in Ubik he had found it meant less and less to him until suddenly it was there in his life once again.

 

Ten minutes into his interview and Tom knew that he would not be getting the position he had originally applied for. Of course, there had been no application as originally there had been no position. It had taken several letters and arguments to persuade someone within the British government that Ubik could not simply be ignored.

 

It was not a nation of muggles or wizards, it was something new and supposedly ancient from the various speeches the emperor had given, to simply leave it as if it was something long since dealt with was an act of such hubris that Tom couldn’t begin to describe it.

 

Outside on the streets, in the Prophet, there was constant ranting on the evils of Ubik on its manipulation of the hapless muggles and of its power hungry emperor but no one stepped against it or towards it too easily remembering the fate of Grindlewald. That was all though, they yammered, as they always yammered, as they had sat and fretted when the German wizards had almost crossed the channel just waiting for death to come to them and did nothing. A dangerous nation they said and they looked at him with cold eyes and told him there was no need for an ambassador, an embassy, or any sort of political action towards a pseudo nation such as Ubik.

 

Ubik was beneath Britain, they had initially responded to him.

 

In the end he was coming to accept that it was more out of annoyance rather than any acknowledgement of his arguments that created the position and eventually led to his interview.

 

“I can promise you, sir, that there is no British wizard who knows Ubik as thoroughly as I do.” He interrupted, motioning to his resume which boasted of not only great wizarding talent but also far more muggle knowledge than any wizard had ever dared boast before; someone who knew not only of the emperor but the subjects of Ubik themselves, who could point to several prominent ones by name, and speak on their work and philosophies.

 

This position, he had argued in his letter, was not one for a pureblood to promote the rampant nepotism in the government (of course his words in the letter had been far kinder and less blunt) they needed a muggle born. They needed someone who understood both muggles and wizards, more someone who understood refugees, of living in terror that they would be burnt to cinders and looking for somewhere, anywhere, to escape.

 

Of the Hogwarts graduates and all British wizards that Tom could think of he was the only one who had lived in fear of the Blitz and the horrific muggle war that had lasted longer and burned far greater than Grindlewald’s march of terror.

 

“I’m afraid, Mr. Riddle, as promising as your resume is and as… deep as your knowledge of the situation you just don’t have the experience for this kind of position.” The man said, folding his hands and looking over the desk at Tom with an expression that was almost pitying.

 

He paused for a moment, as if to let that sink in, and Tom couldn’t help but hate this nameless pawn of the government almost as much as he hated headmaster Dippet and even Albus Dumbledore; they had all at one point or another looked at him with that expression in their eyes. That pitying expression, as if to say, good Tom but not good enough if only you had a name of worth in your possession and then we might speak with one another.

 

It was a small wonder claiming his heritage as Slytherin’s heir had been so very tempting.

 

“However, that being said, you come highly recommended from your professors and your NEWT scores are nothing to sneeze at. An ambassador to a hostile and dangerous nation such as Ubik will need an assistant. You may consider yourself employed by the Ministry, Mr. Riddle.”

 

And he smiled at Tom as if he had given him a great gift and all Tom could do was stare back and shake his hand.

 

* * *

 

In the end they gave the position to Orion Black, who ironically as it was, had less experience than Tom and was far less knowledgeable. Or perhaps it wasn’t irony, perhaps it was merely the system, and somehow that was all the more depressing.

 

“What do you mean it’s on Mars?” He asked when they were packing for the first trip to Ubik where they hoped to create an embassy, establish political relations, and discover the true nature of the emperor’s plots to relay back to Britain and to the greater masses.

 

They were in their newly allotted ministry office, a large one for Orion, and a smaller cubby for Tom off to the side. The walls were bare and little decoration was out as, nearly as soon as they were hired, the minister made it clear that he wanted the Ubik thing dealt with immediately. Again there was the irony, or what should have been irony in any normal government, that only months before the minister had wanted nothing to do with Ubik but now that there were ambassadors and officials it was off to work. Nothing could have suited Tom more though than leaving Britain for a few months. 

 

“I mean that it’s on that planet the centaurs are always raving about.” Tom said, as he double checked the contents of his trunk, it mostly contained clothes and books but there were a few other things as well; British souvenirs with which to sport his nationalism, something required by the Ministry, as well as his notebooks for his own personal use.

 

“But how’d anyone get up there?... And how do you know this anyway, you’re the assistant.” He pointed out sharply with narrowed eyes, he had laughed when he learned that Tom Riddle was to be his assistant, Tom Riddle who had always been so much smarter than everyone else reduced to being an assistant for Orion Black.

 

“The system works.” Orion had greeted him with a smile, as if seeing Slytherin’s resident mudblood had just made his day.

 

“I know this because I know quite a bit about the country that we’re about to try to forge political relations with, I would suggest that you learn something about it as well.” Tom said a tad sharply before closing his trunk and looking a final time at Orion.

 

“No need to take that tone, mudblood.” Orion said with a sniff before adding, “Besides, I never read anything about it being on Mars in the Prophet.”

 

Only fools believe the Prophet, was what Tom wanted to say, but he had already said far too much and it was almost time to go.

 

“Are you ready?” He asked instead and Orion shrugged with a slight grin, a job that was not a true job, a job fit for the next lord of the house of Black before he took his seat on the Wizengamot.

 

It was a job that no one took seriously even as they screamed and raved.

 

Only Tom, who had labored over letters for hours feeling at the end of them that he had written something similar to Machiavelli’s “The Prince” to several different ministry officials, seemed to care that a political means of addressing Ubik exist.

 

“Alright, let’s go visit the Martians.” Orion said and then they were off, using the now worn system that Azrael had initially created, where any true wish or intention to go would take them to customs as if it was merely another apparition.

 

Later, after the day had ended and he was mostly unpacked, he would sit in his new quarters in Ubik and wonder how he could possibly help Britain to avoid disaster and if he even wanted to.

 

* * *

 

They would not meet the emperor in a professional capacity for some time. Unofficially though he met Azrael the very night he moved in.

 

One moment he had been hanging various posters on the wall, ones he had been suggested to bring by the government to support British culture abroad, and then the next there was a shadow in the doorway.

 

“The Chudley Canons, Tom?” He had turned to see Azrael smiling at a red poster featuring some quidditch player or another fondly but with a great deal of mirth in his eyes, “You do realize they are possibly the worst professional quidditch team to have been formed.”

 

“It was suggested I bring something British, like quidditch, with me. They thought you as the emperor might be interested in such glorious aspects of our culture, as if our idiotic national sport might impress you, I bought the cheapest poster I could find.”

 

Azrael tilted his head and considered the poster before replying, “I’ve always liked quidditch.”

 

He looked more the emperor than he usually did in Tom’s presence, he didn’t have the scepter or the crown of stars, but it was simply in the way he stood in the doorway. Or perhaps it was simply that now, as an employed adult, his perception of Azrael had changed so that he always looked like the emperor of Ubik even when he meant not to.

 

After a brief greeting, having seen Azrael for most of the summer, they eventually headed out and away from the city taking the less lit back alleys until they found themselves in the open fields facing the mountains.

 

Things seemed different, more so than they had before, and all at once Tom felt aware of how old he was. He was no longer a child, of course he had never felt like a child, but even so walking through the tall grass, sparks emitting with each stalk the passed through, he felt as if he truly realized that he was now a young man. Azrael looked notably younger than him now, still a boy, and that realization was so very odd to him.

 

They walked in silence until they eventually reached the lake where Azrael had first shown him Ubik, and even after the city had been built up behind them, it still seemed so very distant and alien. He knew that he would never quite grow used to it, that perhaps no one truly would, and as always it was a thought he didn’t wish to dwell on.

 

“So here we are again.” Tom said staring out at the water, “Out of Hogwarts and the world awaits.”

 

And the words still seemed so empty, now that he was here, in a role that was not quite the one that he had pictured but close enough he felt as if he had moved nowhere at all. As he stared out into the horizon there was still only the abyss, no path beyond it, the future was so terribly unclear.

 

“The world is always waiting, Tom, it will always abide.” Azrael said musingly, staring out into the lake, and Tom had to catch himself from staring at his green eyes and the various lights reflected in them.

 

“We’ll see, if Orion Black doesn’t start a war with Ubik first.” Tom said with a frown, he had realized when he was not hired as the ambassador that things would be difficult, but he had not truly thought until they had arrived how difficult things were going to be.

 

He could see it now, meeting with the council rather than Azrael and Black becoming offended believing he had been blown off for mere powerless muggles when in truth it was the muggles who ruled the government, him throwing racial slurs that they didn’t quite understand not realizing that he was insulting a culture who had left Earth due to things like anti-Semitism and persecution. It was going to be a disaster.

 

“While magical Britain does have its fair share of racism I hardly doubt they’ll be worse than some of the governments that have come up here. Perhaps a bit less tactful but hardly too much worse, besides, as it stands Britain is in any condition to start a war.” Azrael said, he’d never described to Tom in details how those first negotiations with the Americans, Soviets, and various other interested and terrified nations had gone but after the first few he had seemed considerably tired as if merely the thought of these people somehow drained him.

 

Azrael was probably right, compared to their muggle counterparts the wizarding portion of Britain was hardly ready for war, aside from the fact that there was no standing army and no real means to form one the people were not willing to engage in conflict so soon after the threat of Grindlewald had passed over. They had narrowly avoided one wizarding war they were hardly going to fight against the man who had rid them of the German wizard as if he was nothing more than dirt under his boot. Still, the idea of Orion Black, who probably was more representative or wizarding Britain than Tom, standing before Ubik’s government was more than enough to make him shudder.

 

“Is this what you meant about not liking British politics?” Tom asked, Azrael looked at him for a few moments, as if to judge him and then slowly shook his head.

 

“No, no I imagined something… Well, I suppose it isn’t relevant at the moment anyway.” He said and forced his mouth into something resembling a smile as if his words had not brought on a shadow of foreboding.

 

“Was that supposed to be reassuring?” He asked to which Azrael shrugged, “I might be over exaggerating things, Tom, as you’ve surely guessed by now in spite of my high marks in Divination I’m not always spot on with the subject. I prefer to think that the future isn’t limited by prescience.”

 

After a moment of silence Azrael added, “You don’t have to worry about Orion Black starting a war. He may not build bridges but I suppose that’s why you’re here, Mr. Assistant.”

 

“Yes, I suppose it is.”


	19. Chapter 19

Tom’s predictions had more or less been correct. He had not realized the difficulty they would have in even getting a meeting, he’d assumed after Hogwarts was finished that he would be seen and recognized as an adult, he hadn’t realized how very young he and Orion Black looked. It’d only been after various confirmations and paperwork saying that, yes they were ambassadors to a country they had never heard of before, that they were able to have the meeting at all. As it was only Orion Black was to go, as Tom was merely the assistant, and from what he’d gathered it’d gone about as well as Tom had initially thought.

 

Luckily or unluckily for them the government of Ubik, the ones Azrael had all but demanded be in charge, did not have authority over the borders. Azrael had supposedly given the people entering his country very few rules but the ones he did have were stringent. No one would be thrown out of the nation without his permission this included the Soviets, the Germans, and even the Magical British.

 

That said after a week it had been clear that they had been placed on more or less indefinite hold on the outskirts of the capital city.

 

Black, after that initial meeting, had also been rather insulted, “Muggles, Riddle, the bastard had me meet with a bunch of muggles!”

 

They were eating in the quarters they had been allotted, temporary housing on the edge of the city, where other visitors to Ubik could be seen mingling here and there; lost looking people of all nationalities looking both in awe and discomforted by their surroundings as if they expected to find more of their own culture hidden inside the architecture.

 

Ubik had changed, Tom thought, even in the few years of its existence. At first one would mostly find Jewish refugees or intellectuals, people who had already been shoved out of their own country with nowhere to look back to, for them it had either been Ubik or America and when the messiah had appeared in Ubik with powerful technologies the world had never seen there was no longer a question of where to go. Recently though prisoners who had been in Stalin’s gulags, who had not quite been worked to death but who were not satisfied with their situation or their nations, had begun to immigrate. It was still the refuge of the desperate, those who felt as if they had been thrown out with no recourse, but the fact remained that Ubik was no longer a barren red eye in the sky.

 

In the city the divides showed, in spite of the similar architecture of the buildings one could immediately tell the orthodox Jewish sector from the Soviet sector and within those the difference between the Poles, the Germans, the Russians, and all the various other nationalities. It was not Israel, the nation the Zionists had originally meant to create in Palestine, and for that there was tension in the air.

 

As it was though Tom had yet to see an immigrant from a magical nation, there were some who possessed magic, Rabbis and their apprentices as well as the few gypsies that had managed to find their way onto the planet’s red soil but none he could spy who had come from a magical nation; who used wands and practiced with spells.

 

For Black there would be no one but muggles in the place.

 

“Ridiculous, as if I’d put up with that.” Black said looking at the unknown food on his plate with vague curiosity, mysterious fruit and vegetables that were not found on Earth, before shrugging and eating it anyway, “I mean, who does he think we are?”

 

“I hope you didn’t call them that.” Tom said quietly although he knew without even having to say it that Orion had and multiple times at that.

 

“Call them what?”

 

“Muggles, to their faces.”

 

Orion looked blankly at him, uncomprehending, “So, it’s what they are, it’s not like I called them mudbloods or something.”

 

Tom sighed, “Muggle is an inherent insult, no matter if it’s the word we use or not. Simply from the way it sounds, listen to the syllables, muggle, it sounds like a bumbling round thing that is amusing but never to be taken seriously.”

 

Orion blinked, “Really? You know, because I always just thought it was a word.”

 

“Words are never simply words, particularly to these people. Do you know anything about what’s been going on for the last decade in the muggle world?”

 

“No, it’s not like it’s important.” Orion said with a shrug.

 

Tom said nothing, simply stared at him, and wondered how he could possibly correct centuries of culture and misunderstandings so that Black might comprehend how idiotic that sentence truly sounded. Their being on Ubik, on red Martian soil, should have been proof in and of itself of the fallacy of overlooking muggles and muggle politics.  

 

The trouble was that Tom didn’t think he could understand. Even if Orion Black truly desired to understand the inner workings of the muggle war his very concept of muggles would not allow it. To him muggles were all lumped into the same category, the very concept of religion was vague to most wizards and even then Black was part of a family that was traditionally against the rights of mudbloods, seeing the more gruesome equivalent in the muggle world might mean nothing to him. Perhaps, he might think, these people are similar to the muggleborn stain in our country and they were thus justified in attempting to root them out. Tom liked to think that in England it was not so bad, those without the right pedigree had not been moved into the ghettos and marked out, but Magical Britain was not all that different from where Germany had started at the end of the First World War.

 

Still, he tried.

 

“The muggle war, the most recent one, was the most violent the world has ever seen to date and it was ended forcibly by an outside party. Perhaps what is particularly memorable is that a group of people, muggles with specific characteristics, were placed into camps where they were essentially killed off. Many of the people in Ubik, many in the government, are survivors of these camps. They are very sensitive to racism and any other slurs.”

 

Orion looked angry for a few moments, stabbing at his food, and finally said, “Get off your high horse mudblood, I didn’t slur at them or anything. Besides, it’s the damn emperor I’m pissed at, who cares what the muggles think?” It was almost impressive, how utterly unthinking that sentence was. So that all Tom could do for a moment was stare at his former classmate and wonder just how they had even attended the same school and seen such very different things.

 

He decided not to tell Orion the intricacies of the government, how Azrael the emperor had very little to do with it in reality, let Orion Black find that for himself. It hardly mattered, their first opportunity was gone, and they were going to have to wait and see if they could find success for themselves.

 

Still, Tom thought to himself later, what a pity that it had all gone as predicted. He had hoped his life would be more interesting than that.

 

* * *

 

In the end Tom managed to set up the embassy by himself. Ubik didn’t necessarily appreciate all the countries who had embassies there after all. The Soviets had an embassy as did the Germans, though the many of the citizens of Ubik hated these nations they still had an embassy all the same, these were the embassies that could be found on the very edge of the city closer to where the wild things were thought to roam and the Martian’s dead spirits could be found.

 

Wizarding Britain in spite of its less than stellar introduction, was not on quite as bad of terms with the government as that, so it had only taken a bit of paperwork and talking on Tom’s end to get the building constructed and in a location that was not as terrible as it could have been.

 

From there he began to petition for an audience with the emperor himself, which was a bit harder, but then he had suspected it would be.

 

“Forgive me, Mr. Riddle, but I was under the impression that your friend Mr. Black was the ambassador.”

 

How was it, that even in a foreign country, he was overlooked for someone as mediocre and entitled as Orion Black?

 

Tom smiled grimly, “He is but he felt that, after the last meeting having gone so well, that I might try and speak with you instead. You see he is insistent upon meeting the emperor rather than what we assume to be middlemen, you understand the sort of reputation that Ubik has on Earth.”

 

The idea of Azrael as a divine emperor, an absolute monarch like something out of the 18th century was not something that had been dispelled. When people spoke of Ubik they spoke of the emperor and assumed that it was the emperor who was making the decisions and while it was true that he controlled the border and thus much of the foreign policy it did not occur to other nations that he was not readily involved in many political aspects.

 

Besides there was something about the mythos Azrael presented, the Martian king, the alien who had powers and technology beyond comprehension; so that he almost appeared a god. His intervention in the war only fanned the flames and in his shadow the people who immigrated to Ubik seemed so terribly small. How could they not look to the emperor instead?

 

The man made a noise of agreement, understanding, before saying, “Still, one does not simply meet the emperor, Mr. Riddle.”

 

(And Tom wondered how he looked to the man then, he and Orion Black, such terribly young men. What kind of a state, he was no doubt thinking, sent boys to deal in foreign policy?)

 

Staring at the man, thinking of all the arguments he could say, and how he could convince this man that a schoolboy was worthy of negotiating terms with a god he realized that the solution was far easier than he suspected.

 

There was a card he doubted Orion Black had played, or had even realized he could play. Because as immature and unsuited to the position as Orion Black was he would follow the laws given to him by his nation very seriously. For pureblood wizards, and perhaps even most muggleborn, there was no question of breaking the statute of secrecy. It simply was not done, the fact that Azrael had was horrifying and inconceivable, an act uniformly seen as evil no matter the good consequences it had for the world. Orion Black had told them that they were a nation called Britain that was not the muggle Britain they knew, that they were a completely separate state with their own laws and customs, but he would not have said why they were so different even in the meeting where Tom was not present. He would not have shown this man or any of these men magic, not to a muggle, even when Ubik was not considered a nation of muggles.

 

Tom had never considered breaking the statute, not for these reasons, he had considered it when younger to create fear in the orphanage and to remind them of who he was but he never thought to disclose the existence of a magical Britain. Even for him, when Azrael had done it and ended the war, there had been that initial non-understanding where he could not picture a world in which the statute did not exist. It seemed so second nature, just as the idea of economy or statehood was second nature, a world without it seemed so very wrong.

 

Here though, in a small side room of the government building, he broke that one law for which he might never be forgiven.

 

“I’m sure Mr. Black told you that our nation is not like yours,” Tom started, the man said nothing though, and so Tom brought out his wand and motioned towards a coaster that was on the table and it began to float. The man made no outward movement, but his eyes did grow a bit wider, and on his face there was a more serious expression, “Where we come from acts like this are quite common, we call it magic, and the majority of the population that exists within our country has the ability to perform magic and spends many years training that ability. In terms of power, implications towards our nation and our culture, I’m afraid it’s the emperor himself who has the greatest expertise no matter the experience and wisdom of the other members of the government. It would be very much appreciated if we could have an audience with the emperor.”

 

As it turned out the man was familiar with magic, in Ubik it was less of a secret among those who did practice magic and with the emperor walking around keeping magic a secret seemed a rather absurd concept. Even the idea of magical counterparts to nations was not unfamiliar, Azrael had made mention of these places once or twice, but as Azrael had a tendency to do he was vague and rather unclear.

 

“They will come.” Was all he would say on the subject but in the few years since Ubik was born magical Britain was the first to make contact and for that their importance was acknowledged.

 

Tom answered the questions as best he could, about the education, and the government keeping vague the details he felt would be displeasing. He did not state that the reason he and Orion Black had been employed, boys barely out of school, was because magical Britain did not take foreign policy seriously particularly foreign relations with what they considered to be a pseudo nation. He did not touch upon the issue of pedigree, that he was a muggleborn and Orion a pureblood and that it made all the difference in the world. In the end he kept to the basics and wondered if the man couldn’t see through the words to the true situation regardless, perhaps it was written all over their faces, but Tom couldn’t see that having lived there for so long.

 

Whatever he had said it was enough for a man in his late forties to take an eighteen year old foreign boy seriously and though he did not say as much when their meeting ended Tom had the feeling that he and Orion Black would earn their audience with the emperor of Ubik if only for being the first magical nation to make an attempt at foreign relations.

 

Still as he exited, walked back to the embassy where they had relocated, he wondered how he could possibly explain what he’d done and why it didn’t matter in the scheme of things.

 

The statue of secrecy, as Azrael had once said, was falling to pieces and it was best to stay a step in front of the times before it came crashing down on all their heads.

 

* * *

 

Azrael found him leaning against the wall outside of the building, staring off into the paved streets, and the too small sunset that caught on the peaks of the mountains in the distance.

 

“You look pensive.” Observed a familiar voice and Tom turned to see Azrael standing next to him with that expression of fondness in his eyes, “Turning the world on its head?”

 

When he said nothing Azrael continued musing, “You are an excellent politician, Tom, regardless of your tactics. You may think it took more time than it should have but for an unknown nation to gain an audience after that first meeting, well, it was a feat.”

 

“The statute will never last, not with Ubik now, soon enough muggleborn children will be born here and then it would have been broken regardless.” Tom said staring out with a blank expression, “The age of magical states is waning, not over, but fading as magic becomes available and known to the general population. Perhaps under a different name but never the less, the statue is finished, centuries of tradition and politics just… gone.”

 

Azrael said nothing for a few moments and then, “Changed not gone, the statue is a crutch for which these nations justify their superiority, through the use of _obliviate_ and other memory charms they convince themselves that nothing has changed even as time trickles past. All the same they’ve felt it in their bones, why stand against the muggleborn Tom? Why this obsession with purity and tradition? They are fighting a losing war with time, you have not ended things as I have also not ended things, everything changes.”

 

“And that is how I’m supposed to explain the recent development to Black?” Tom said bitterly looking at Azrael.

 

“Perhaps not.” Azrael responded with a small smile as if he knew Tom would never say such a thing to Black, “You could lie, after all, I know of the existence of magic and magical empires.”

 

And that was what Tom had intended, it was partially true after all, Azrael had told them something of the magical states within greater known states. It would not be entirely false to say that it was Azrael who had told them of wizards, of ministries of magic, of the statute of secrecy, of wizarding schools and education, of culture and all other things. It was the simplest solution, the one Black would want to hear, and it was the one that would ring out in the Prophet as the empire effectively declaring war against not only Britain but all of magical Europe.

 

To break the statue of secrecy on such a level was not merely an act of war it was sacrilege.  

 

Still, the fact that he had to say such things, had to pin it as a crime on some third party instead state it as the necessity it was left a sour taste in his mouth.

 

There was so much possibility in Ubik, possibility that was not evident in Britain, and Tom had hoped that the potential of Ubik might somehow inconceivably rub off on Britain. So that magic wasn’t debased to sticks and words but transformed into Azrael’s brand of magic, more difficult yes, but also more powerful and more genuine. Perhaps it would have been enough for England to simply recognize that they used only a process of magic, that if their wands were broken and spells lost there would be other routes to turn to, they only used a medium.

 

But for the moment that future was dim, if not obscured entirely, and instead there was only what he had done and suspected might come of it.

 

“I thought it would be easier.” Tom finally concluded turning to look at Azrael and Azrael just smiled, his expression saying more than his words could; that life was never easy. 


	20. Chapter 20

Life had never been particularly easy for Tom. There had always been trials and he had accepted long before Hogwarts that there would always be trials, some opposition which must be swiftly and brutally dealt with, he had dreamed of a time where his reputation would speak for him but reality had always been cold.

 

Passed over, underestimated, having to remind them over and over again that he was more than he appeared whether that was mudblood, orphan, school boy, or anything else he was more than the image his face so kindly presented for him.

 

And with Voldemort that had been fine because there had been that end vision, where he would no longer have to resort to such measures, where everyone would know his name and quiver in fear of it without even having to be told what it meant.

 

The name wasn’t his flight from death, no, it was supposed to be theirs their flight from the death he represented for them.

 

Still, without Voldemort it was harder than he had expected it to be or rather it was going to be harder than he expected. With every step forward he took the future seemed bleaker ahead, never the less one could only walk forward, because to walk back would be worse than even defeat.

 

Orion Black was just as outraged and horrified as Tom had expected when presented with the news that the Ubikians had already known about wizards and that the statute of secrecy had been broken without them having even to open their mouths.

 

“That bastard, that blood traitor bastard!” Orion said pounding his fist against one of the walls, scrambling for a moment the runes made of light inside, but it was really his face that said more. Tom doubted Orion had the words for it, the inconceivable insult that the emperor of Ubik had offered both magical Britain and all other magical states.

 

“To be fair we don’t know his blood status.” Tom said quietly at which point Orion turned to him with an expression far too bitter for his young features. Orion had never been the worst of Tom’s opposition, he had been too sheltered and conceited to really press upon the fact that Tom was a mudblood in Slytherin, to him it was a given that this was the way the world worked. He had never hated Tom, derided him yes, belittled his achievements undoubtedly, but never hated.

 

Tom was never worth hating, no individual mudblood was worth hating, but on his features then was feeling that Tom had never seen on anyone his age other than himself; rage so bottomless that there were no words to express it.

 

“Well that’s even worse, isn’t it? The bloody mudblood emperor spilling all our secrets to the bloody muggles!” Here he sneered, “Like we can’t do anything about it because he’s all the way up here. Well we’ll show him, we’ll make sure he knows exactly who he’s messing with.”

 

“We can’t do anything about it precisely because he’s all the way up here.” Tom stated in a tone that was more commanding, “He’s the one who controls the border and have you forgotten how strenuous transatlantic apparaition is supposed to be? Imagine travelling to a place where distance is measured in the years it takes light to reach there? Besides, in the few years that Ubik has existed there has been no move to tell any other muggle state; eventually there would be muggle born children on Ubik anyway and the point would be rather moot. Calm down.”

 

“Oh because Tom Riddle has thought it all out hasn’t he?” Orion said throwing his hands in the air, “You know what, I think you like it, I think you like this stupid country with its stupid muggles because it’s the only place you’ll ever really fit. I heard you had to beg the ministry for your job, showed them all your perfect NEWT scores and all your perfect grades and it meant nothing!”

 

Something on his face must have changed because Orion stopped himself, his righteous angry expression dripped from his features and he paled looking down at Tom Riddle, instead a look of wariness entered his eyes and his hands dropped uselessly to his sides.

 

He had never truly been cruel to the students of Hogwarts, not like the orphans. He had retaliated enough in his first year but he had been extraordinarily light because they were wizards and as pitiful as they were they were still like him. More than the orphans had been at any rate, so he had gone easy on them, and they had learned to leave him alone for the most part.

 

Still there was something in his expression. Azrael had commented on it when he had noted the other children scrambling to get away from Tom, even when it had been years since he had lynched Billy’s rabbit or done any true damage to them, “You have the eyes of a machine, a precise instrument of logic, without sentiment or feeling and only that final goal that involves their destruction and humiliation. That, in its own way, that expression is far worse and more terrifying than any punishment you employ after you have turned your sights on them.”

 

For someone with eyes the color of death Tom felt Azrael had judged him a bit harshly but then it would explain why Orion Black, who had never truly been dealt with, was listlessly standing before him as if the energy had been drained from him.

 

“I’ll be outside.” With that Orion Black shuffled out leaving Tom to stare at his retreating back as he made his way out into the Martian night.

 

Perhaps there had been more to the placement of Ubik than Tom had originally thought. He had first assumed it was for the exoticism, to give some means of explanation for Azrael as an emperor no one had ever heard of, and also to make it difficult psychologically for immigration. Only the truly desperate immigrated to Ubik, America even across an ocean was still familiar, but Ubik was alien and unknown and while that drew some in to visit only if they truly wished to leave Earth behind did they stay.

 

There was another factor as well, one Tom had not considered but that Azrael had. It would be next to impossible for any nation or even group of nations to invade; muggle or wizard. It was not merely a river or a mountain range that separated Ubik from other nations but a void of emptiness that stretched longer than the human mind could fathom.

 

War was never a true possibility; at least not at the present moment.

 

Nonetheless those sentiments, Orion Black’s feelings of horrified betrayal, those were not so easily dampened.

 

* * *

 

So it was that magical Britain first introduced itself to the emperor of Ubik through the far too young, ill prepared, and enraged Orion Black and his bitter just as young assistant Tom Riddle. It had always been a recipe for disaster, from the very start with that interview in the ministry, but at the very least it was interesting.

 

“In this meeting, understand that we will not be friends Tom.” Azrael had said on that day Tom had come back from meeting with the council member his eyes so very present and staring right through Tom, “It will be as if we truly are meeting for the first time and only in an official capacity; I will treat you as I would treat any man saying the words you are saying.”

 

He had seen Azrael in the costume of the emperor before, as he had apparated from Wool’s Orphanage to Potsdam with little more effort than a blink of his eye, but then it had only been a costume. Dazzling, yes, but Azrael had not played the role of emperor for him that summer in the orphanage.

 

Walking into the capitol building, where unknown runes shifted lazily about in the walls lighting the hallway in a myriad of colors as they passed, the place seemed more alien than wizarding Britain had so many years before when he was eleven and it was a whole new world. By increasing the dimensions of the inside of the building it came off as vast, with great arching ceilings made of various stones that Tom had not seen on Earth.

 

His usual humility had not deserted him in playing the role of emperor, it was the architecture that dominated the building, there was little decoration; no paintings or statues that would have found themselves at home in any European palace. There was only the structure and at the end of the hall, on a slightly raised platform, was a single undecorated chair made of pale Ubiquitous wood.

 

In it Azrael waited for them, with crown and scepter, his eyes green stars peering out from years away, dressed in his customary foreign black with an odd smile on his face. Orion did pause for a minute on seeing him, looked at that face and perhaps tried to think where he had seen it before. But Orion Black would never have seen Azrael in his usual outfit, always instead seeing his school uniform where only the gloved hands showed through amidst the other Hufflepuff accessories. Back then Azrael had been odd but he had seemed more or less a human and a wizard, his death at the hands of the acromantula had been taken for granted and cemented in everyone’s mind, so it would be odd to find and place him instead as the emperor of Ubik particularly for Orion Black who had never looked twice in his direction.

 

So for a moment there was only bafflement on his face as he stared at the emperor, at his undecorated surroundings, at his simple and small wooden chair but quickly enough the rage returned and his eyes were burning once again.

 

Azrael stood, a single swift motion that was at once both casual and elegant having that unnatural grace that Azrael had always possessed, moving towards the edge of the platform he reached out with a single hand to Orion, “Mr. Black, I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

 

For a moment Orion hesitated on taking it but finally he quickly shook the hand and released it just as fast as if the very sight of those black wrappings and pale fingers offended him. Azrael’s smile grew slightly, that smile that thrived on adversary and discontent as if his thoughts on the world had merely been reaffirmed, and then turned to take Tom’s hand.

 

“And Mr. Riddle, your esteemed assistant. As the first magical nation that has acknowledged Ubik’s existence it’s an honor to accept you here.”

 

He returned to his seat and with a wave of his hand two seats were conjured behind both Tom and Orion, “Sit down, I always feel odd when I’m the only one sitting in a room.” They sat uncomfortably, Orion not sure what to make of this because as far as his world view was concerned the emperor was acting neither like a pureblood or a mudblood. A pureblood would have exalted at having his own nation and been far more decorative but he was too self-assured to have bad pedigree; in that moment he seemed to be some third option that Orion Black had never concieved.

 

“Rumor has it you wished to speak with me.” And there was the sharpness in his eyes, evaluating and discarding all at once, an expression that Azrael had always been too distant to make and only showed in crucial moments.

 

And whatever footing Orion had lost he found it again, gathering himself and his emotions back into his expression.

 

“That was before we knew you broke the statute of secrecy.” Orion spat out, in words more eloquent than Tom had ever expected of him, it must have been that pureblood pedigree showing through certainly not the minimal training and experience either of them had.

 

“Ah, straight to the point, not usually a quality seen in politicians but one I find preferable.” Here Azrael offered them a slight smile, “Unfortunately I believe you misunderstand the intent of the statute of secrecy or rather its jurisdiction. Yes, it fully applies to the non-magical humans who live in the regions where the statute is in place, Europe as well as a few of the European colonies but outside of those areas where it was originally signed I do not believe it is applicable. So long as me and my people hold to the statute when it concerns those within statute states, in other words not telling British citizens of the existence of magical Britain or any other state my citizens don’t conflict with the statute.”

 

Orion had not been expecting that, his jaw dropped a little, but he recovered swiftly enough, “That doesn’t explain ending that muggle war! Even if we do accept your claim about jurisdiction and other states, which sounds a little too well thought out for me, you clearly broke that intent when you first appeared on Earth.”

 

“That war was an abomination, Mr. Black.” Azrael said quietly, “And had you been more closely involved you would have realized the pale shadow that Grindlewald truly was in comparison to the muggle war that was raging. Regardless even then I did not break the statute, yes they saw grand feats of what you call magic but I never told them it was magic and they never called it magic either, it was only you who used the word magic and applied it to me. To them it is technology and perhaps something else that allowed me to act as I did; but they are rather hesitant to use the word witchcraft because to them it simply does not fit. The statute would have been broken if I had claimed to be a wizard who lived in a wizarding nation, I did not, so I have not broken it.”

 

The silence that followed was somewhat tense, Orion with his clenched jaw and reddening face, Azrael with his cool glance and total control of the situation, and Tom sitting to the side wondering how it was that he had been invited and was sitting next to them but was completely ignored regardless. It wasn’t so much that he was being overlooked, as he had always hated, but that he had somehow managed to drift out of the spotlight so that all he could do was observe the staring match between the emperor of Ubik and magical Britain’s Ubiquitous ambassador. So it wasn’t really insulting, merely odd.

 

“This is all well and good but name calling will get us nowhere.” Tom interjected causing them both to turn towards him, “Whether or not the statute has been broken is almost irrelevant at this point; it would be best on diplomacy for the future and where to step from the point we are already at. Wouldn’t you agree, Ambassador Black?”

 

After a moment Orion allowed Tom control of the situation, perhaps realizing that this was not the time or the place, and stiffly said, “Right.”

 

“As far as the citizens of muggle Britain are concerned it would be much appreciated if you kept your current policy of keeping them in the dark as far as the existence of magical Britain and other wizarding societies are concerned. That is our business, as Ambassador Black so aptly put, and should be ours to deal with and not yours.”

 

“Of course, the war was an exception; you will note that for millennia Ubik did not exist in the minds of mice and men.”

 

Looking at Azrael then, at that too young face lit beneath a crown of stars, he couldn’t help but wonder if Ubik truly had existed elsewhere and not simply in Azrael’s head. If Azrael was not truly an alien, from a world far more distant than Mars and had for whatever reason made his way to Earth and from there to the position of emperor, certainly he played at being human the way an actor toys with a vaguely familiar role.

 

Various policies were negotiated; citizens of British decent, expatriates if ever any should find their way to Ubik would be offered an education at Hogwarts if they proved to have magic not simply whatever educational system Ubik managed to scrounge up. Orion Black had sneered at this, as if the idea of muggle born children being born on Ubik was inconceivable, but Azrael had relented easily enough.

 

Negotiations on trade were a bit harder, as Orion wished to enforce that any products deemed magical could only be sold and marketed to magical states, while Azrael was in favor of free trade and was not willing to let a small and divided nation like magical Britain decide what his nation could sell where.

 

“That, Mr. Black, is also outside your jurisdiction. If you feel you must place an embargo on Ubik and certain products feel free to do so; do not expect us to do the same though.”

 

At the end it was clear that Ubik was not a pliant nation that could be easily kept it check, that it would influence and act beyond their control, holding to its own loose interpretation of the statute of secrecy. The emperor himself had not been what Orion Black or even Tom had envisioned, more solid than the ephemeral Azrael but never the less distant and more alien than centaurs or other sentient magical creatures.

 

“In the end keep in mind that most of these issues you have brought up today are also out of my hands but rather in the hands of the republic. I merely control the borders and the miracles and I think it is more than fine to leave it at that.”

 

In the end it had been a meeting filled with politics, with meaningless issues that danced around the true stakes with finesse, and the little they had accomplished meant nothing in the scheme of things.

 

Back at square one, distrust and fear and so much anger and betrayal, with only the illusion that they had stepped forward. It was disheartening, to say the least.

 

* * *

 

That night he went out in search of Azrael.

 

It was an unusual state of affairs, usually it was Azrael who came to him, no always it had been that. The search for the Chamber of Secrets had been partly for the missing Hufflepuff who had never truly been a Hufflepuff but that was not the same as truly searching. It had always seemed more prudent to wait until Azrael decided to show himself, appear from whatever shadows he had been hiding in, and for the most part that had worked.

 

Azrael seemed to be able to sense when he was distressed, certainly in those few Hogwarts years before his disappearance he had always had a knack for showing up when he was needed and otherwise being impossible to locate. It was not constant though, for months Tom had called and he had not come until that day he appeared in the orphanage.

 

And so that night, feeling too restless to sleep, he had wandered the narrow alleyways of the main city in search of the god emperor of Ubik as well as his only friend.

 

The streets were deserted, glowing beneath strange Ubiquitous plants and floating lights seeming more surreal than Tom had words to describe, he passed the great hexagonal library as well as the palace in the center of the city, various synagogues as well as orthodox churches that had been built in glaring opposition to one another, apartment buildings that stretched towards the sky and still held more space on the inside than the outside, as well as other buildings he recognized and those that he did not from those early days in designing Ubik with Azrael back when it had only been wilderness.

 

He must have crossed the entire city that night, from the pale green plains on the one end to find himself looking at the foothills of the mountains on the other, and it was at the edge of the capital city that Azrael found him.

 

“You could have simply asked and I would have come to find you. Certainly there was no need to walk across the entire city.” And there he was staring at him with that found smile, “It went better than you thought it would.”

 

Tom scoffed, “You’re right, Britain can’t declare war as much as it would like to, Black knows that as well as I do by this point. Still, he’s been writing letters to the ministry for hours now.”

 

Here Azrael’s lips quirked in wry amusement, “Ah the precious ministry.” He said in fondness before adding, “They’re rarely as decisive as they like to be perceived, in acknowledging that I ended not only Grindlewald but the muggle war in the same instant they will be cautious in moving against me too rapidly. I’m sure they’ll sit on their hands for a bit.”

 

And there it was, what Tom had been waiting to hear Azrael say or at least acknowledge, Azrael had never expected relations with magical nations to go well. He expected them to pull back, to regroup and either deny his existence or else attempt to do something about it, not full out war but certainly something.

 

“You mentioned and embargo, you expect Britain to cut off trade.” Tom stated to which Azrael shrugged slightly and looked out to the wilderness.

 

“It’s for their own economic well-being; not only because of politics. If Ubik were to flood the market with products similar to British magical products already in existence then I’m more than certain that outraged British producers would demand the product be shut out of the country. Magical Britain has been wavering on economic collapse for a decade at the very least, certainly since the muggle recession, and the last thing they need is international competition. The politics are simply added motivation.” It was the first time he and Azrael had discussed politics so frankly, before there had been talk of the statute and the inevitability of its collapse but they had not talked about Britain and the specifics of Britain’s current situation. He had not realized that while Azrael disliked politics he was adept at them and looked into them far more closely than Tom ever had.

 

In comparison to muggle Britain in the 1930’s wizarding Britain had seemed a beacon of industry and all that was glittering in the world. Even with plans of Voldemort in his head he had not thought in terms of the country but how to vault himself to the top so that others could recognize him for what he truly was, extraordinary. Economic collapse, the falliability of the statute of secrecy, and the advancement of muggle technology and what it meant for wizards none of these were things he had considered without Azrael’s prompting.

 

From those words it seemed very clear; Azrael did not expect magical Britain to last long, perhaps it would adapt and change but regardless the state that Tom had known and grown up in could not hold itself upright.

 

The era of the magical states was fading, hadn’t he said those very words to Azrael? But then he hadn’t meant then, he had meant fifty years or perhaps a hundred, at the very worst a few decades but he had not meant that very moment. 

 

“Even had you decided to take over the country, to remake it in your image, you would still be remaking it and it would no longer be what it was. Everything shifts Tom, in transition always, this is the nature of things.”

 

Looking into that fifteen year old face, already markedly different from Tom’s more adult features, at that pale skin and those ancient eyes Tom let out a bitter laugh, “You don’t.”

 

“I don’t count.”

 

He wanted to ask then, so many questions, but he was almost afraid of the answers because they could be exactly what he feared they were. Not human, certainly, but what did that mean? Unchanging, distant, god-like, immortal? The immortality that Tom had searched for, or simply frozen until he died at some point, but when? What was time to Azrael, he had never asked, how could he when reality itself seemed so fluid to him?

 

He still searched for immortality, on off days in the library, flipping through books and just sitting and thinking about forms and time and light because it was somewhere in there; in the very bones of the universe and in himself rather than chanting incantations or philosophers stones. He was so close, he thought, that he could almost taste it sometimes.

 

How had it taken him so long to realize that Azrael had never talked of succession, had created an empire out of nothingness but made no move to step away from it to claim any sort of heir, that in three years he had barely changed in features?

 

In the end he didn’t need to ask the questions because the answers seemed so blatantly obvious that they were painful to look at.

 

It was Azrael who interrupted the silence, with a hesitant expression on his face he said, “Believe it or not I have told you the answer, who I really am, not Azrael but… I wasn’t clear, I rarely am on that subject, but I did imply the answer I came to.”

 

He offered Tom a weak smile, “Don’t ask, not yet, it’s a story I don’t like telling and one I doubt you’d like to hear. So, humor me for a little while, don’t ask.”


	21. Chapter 21

Time passed slowly in the erratic and odd seasons of Mars that seemed vaguely familiar and then entirely whimsical. Flowers bloomed in the dead cold appearing in the snow like colored stars and keeping track of time in terms of Earth days and weeks began to seem both irrelevant and somehow false as if they were clinging to things.

 

It affected Orion Black more than Tom, his calendar was always accurate, a charmed piece of paper that tracked not only the date but the season and the time and the latest rounds in quidditch. It hung there, tacked onto the wall with an overpowered sticking charm, looking garish and altogether out of place amidst their other furnishings. Then, when it had seemed altogether too juxtaposed for either of them to stand, Black had gone on to add more until the joint living spaces were all but covered in quidditch posters and when those had run out Astrology charts and anything British that Black could get his hands on.

 

Tom suspected that if he took a look at Black’s private quarters it would be the same.

 

It was Black who would announce the holidays, whenever one popped up, always using the older pureblood terms like Samhain but never the less appearing brighter and more chipper than on other days as if these wizarding English holidays somehow translated to Ubik.

 

Some on Ubik did practice traditional holidays, Passover occurred along which Chanukah, and in some of the more recently developed sectors the vaguely familiar Christian holidays with a more Eastern orthodox flavor to them and for the most part they looked the same but at the same time even those who celebrated knew that a holiday on Ubik was not the same as a holiday on Earth.

 

Things slowed down, Black continued to write letters to the ministry on almost a daily basis, with a look of youthful determination that made Tom almost pity him for his effort. Tom sent letters requesting staffing for the embassy as neither he nor Black could run the things themselves nor given their position should have been expected to.

 

If Black received few letters in return Tom received even less as living full time in Ubik with only a few months holiday in England was a life that no one seemed to want. It became more busy work than anything else, and sometimes even a joke, as Tom began to send out letters to the people least likely to accept but most likely to send back a slightly entertaining letter.

 

As it was he’d sent out employment offers to all of his Slytherin year mates save Orion Black as well as Minerva McGonagall who would be too stressed in her apprenticeship with Dumbledore to send back anything beyond vaguely coherent Scottish irritation.

 

The fact remained that it was slower going than either of them had expected it to be and most of their evenings were spent in vague toleration of each other twiddling their thumbs and trying to talk politics.

 

“We should hire a spy.” Orion Black stated one night, tapping his fingers impatiently on the armchair and staring into the fire.

 

“And what precisely would we do with a spy?” Tom asked feeling much more relaxed than Black which was usually the case. It was strange how they had switched now that they were out of school, for most of his Hogwarts career Tom had always been on edge, always thinking and plotting and focusing on the next task that needed to be accomplished. Towards the end that had been less and less true but even then he had been more driven than Black.

 

During Hogwarts Black had spent most of his time goofing off and feeling vaguely superior with his friends, avoiding his second cousin Walburga Black who he had the horror of discovering he was engaged to towards the end of their school years, and discussing exactly what made a lady ‘fine’ and other rather mundane topics with the other Slytheirns who weren’t Tom.

 

He’d probably intended to approach work in a similar manner, certainly before they had left it had seemed more of a joke than a real occupation, but as it was having been on Ubik and seen the extent of it for himself he found a passion that he had never had inside Hogwarts and the fires of determination blazed forth in his eyes.

 

“The emperor, obviously, we’ve only met him once we need someone closer someone to see how he ticks, hears all his plans, finds his weaknesses…” He trailed off looking as if in deep thought on the matter, picturing some pureblood heir no doubt, smiling sweetly at Azrael and earning all his deepest secrets. 

 

“Do you imagine those weaknesses would be easy to find?” Tom asked rather drily earning a sharp glare from Orion.

 

“Well they’d be a very talented spy, obviously, someone he felt he could trust.”

 

Perhaps Tom was biased as he personally could attest to how private a person Azrael truly was but as it was the plan was one of the stupidest things he had heard from Orion Black all week and there were many stupid things that Black said in any given week.

 

He and Azrael had even already had a conversation on espionage, and Azrael had pointed out that there were already several spies roaming around Ubik, from a whole range of muggle powers and that each and every one of them still had no idea what to make of him or his motivations. But Black didn’t know any of that, so perhaps he deserved the benefit of the doubt.

 

“Alright then, we find a very accomplished spy, where?” Tom asked to which he received another glare from Black, his questioning clearly not helping the matter.

 

“The ministry, obviously.” It was funny how he said it as if Tom was the idiot.

 

“If the ministry had a capable intelligence program then we would have heard about Grindlewald long before he started burning down France.” Tom noted.

 

It said a lot about the growth of their relationship that Black held himself back from stating that perhaps the ministry had wanted Grindlewald to invade, to allow him to cleanse the mudblood filth for them, because maybe England would have been better off without Tom Riddles in the world. He didn’t though, it was in his expression certainly, but he didn’t say it.

 

On other nights there were other ideas bounced around, Black stating them off the top of his head and Tom usually offering some means of a counterargument. They’d discussed small resistance groups snuck in and integrating into the population inciting rebellion, they’d discussed open warfare, they’d discussed a coup d’état lead by a small group of elite and proud pureblood wizards who could not hope to fail even against such a grim figure as the emperor of Ubik, every practical and absurd idea that popped into Black’s head was discussed over tea until it was an almost nightly routine.

 

It was their form of playing cards or else having friendly conversation, they schemed and bickered and argued and tried to feel as if they were doing something about the situation. Both felt, in their own very different ways, that England’s situation was not good.

 

Black blamed it on the integration and infestation of mudbloods as well as now Ubik and Tom blamed it on a hopelessly corrupt government and dying economy but despite their difference in reasoning both were somewhat worried for the state of affairs back home.

 

That thought always made the quidditch posters seem a bit less ridiculous than before, less cheery, and instead made them feel almost necessary as if this tiny island of wizarding British culture in an alien sea was more than justified.

 

* * *

 

He did not know what Azrael was, in the end it was as simple and complicated as that.

 

He and Azrael, for the most part, were the same as they ever were. Always dancing around some integral topic, weaving it in and out of every conversation but never looking at it fully, to the point where Tom could always feel it but could not name or recognize it for the life of him.

 

He knew its shape, that cold or else desperate glance in Azrael’s green eyes. He knew its color, words on immortality, on gods, on power, on time, on percept, and on life. But he could not give it one singular name, only small names that did not quite cover it, most of which had been given to him by Azrael himself.

 

For the first time Tom found himself wondering if he truly wanted to know. He didn’t believe in ignorance as bliss, had never believed it, it was always best to be aware even if awareness of the situation was painful. It had been best to know that wizarding Britain was not what it offered or appeared than to still believe that ruling it meant something. Still though the closer he came to whatever it was Azrael hid with poetry and lies of omission the more he felt himself sour to the idea of knowing it.

 

Because knowing it would change things, would somehow change more than just his perspective of the situation, and as strained as his relationship with Azrael sometimes was and as much as he longed to plunge closer and understand he wasn’t sure if he truly wished to understand.

 

Perhaps it would be best if he did not push or pull but merely waited and allowed for it to reveal itself. That was how he justified his cold feet to himself at any rate.

 

They discussed many things, politics, wizarding nobility, Orion Black, letters from Minerva McGonagall, all things ranging from small to quite large.

 

“It sounds like things are going well with Dumbledore.” Azrael commented with a somewhat fond smile at the most recent letter from McGonagall. After receiving her offer of employment from Tom she had respectfully declined and then less respectfully began to admonish him for vaguely promising to write and then not bothering to send a single word for almost a year and then not even giving her an address at all.

 

Since then he’d received more or less periodic letters from her, and when he forgot to reply or else didn’t feel like it, as well as more or less periodic howlers. It seemed that she was forcing their acquaintanceship from latter days of Hogwarts to continue whether Tom liked it or not.

 

“Becoming an animagus is hardly that impressive.” Tom commented, although it was impressive that she had registered so young and in the middle of her apprenticeship. Still he hardly thought it was worth commenting on. He’d vaguely considered becoming an animagus in school, back when he had still had the vision of Voldemort in his head, he’d thought a serpent would be most appropriate but those plans had fallen through with his depression and he hadn’t managed to get back to them since, “Besides how do you even know who Minerva McGonagall is?”

 

“Believe it or not Tom I did actually go to Hogwarts, I may not have associated with that many students but I knew their names.” Azrael said with a slightly put out expression as if that comment had somehow implied that he was stupid, “Besides, I’ve always liked McGonagall, she has… integrity.”

 

Yes, Tom supposed that was a good word for it, once you got past the sternness, the punctuality, the pride, and the honor deep down Minerva McGonagall truly was what Gryffindor had wished to represent. She was fundamentally different in that way from Tom and every once in a while Tom did find himself respecting that. She was certainly better than most.

 

Still, his eyes on her letters and on news of her were always much too fond for that explanation, it was as if he knew her not quite as well as he knew Tom but still knew her. It wasn’t the same with others, he didn’t know Black, not until he’d come to Ubik. He’d even seemed surprised by Black, by his immaturity, as if he’d been expecting his father or someone respectable and not fresh out of Hogwarts with only a name to back him up. In speaking with Black and hearing stories about him he often seemed distant, as if reevaluating something in his own mind, and correcting assumptions that had been made. Only a few, Dumbledore, Tom, Slughorn, and now McGonagall were actually familiar to him.

 

Tom had even checked, asking McGonagall, between sentences if she remembered the Hufflepuff Azrael and if she had ever talked to him.

 

Her answer had been a blunt and emotional no, as Azrael was an assumed victim of the acromantula the mere mention of him brought up things they would rather not linger on, and they had not discussed him since.

 

So how was it then that he seemed to know her so well and with such fondness, to look past her pride and strictness to that inner integrity that was not so easily seen? How did he know her if she did not know him?

 

He glimpsed Azrael, through the years and through the words, he caught images of him but never managed to see him directly even when looking him straight in the eyes. Tom liked Azrael, liked him more than he had liked anyone else in the world, and probably more than he would anyone in the years to come but he did not know him.

 

Sometimes, even when simply looking at him, etching the pale features into his mind along with those too green eyes he knew that it was only a mask. That Azrael wore faces the way most men wore costumes and that Tom did not truly know him.

 

It hurt, it would have hurt far more when he was sixteen and abandoned, but never the less he wondered if he truly wanted to know. Or if, at the true end of things, there were some things you did not touch.

 

Regardless it ceased to matter in a time that was both shorter and longer than Tom had ever expected. By the time he was twenty one the façade they had agreed upon came to a shuddering halt.

 

* * *

 

When asked later, because he was asked when the effects became apparent to even the most unobservant, he could not begin to describe it even if he wanted to.

 

A philosopher’s stone, he’d been asked several times, or perhaps it was some ancient ritual, some forbidden dark art. And each time they asked, no matter who it was, he searched within his memories and wondered how he could even begin to describe it.

 

Azrael, he did not realize until after, didn’t speak in poetics because it amused him but because he had no choice. In the face of some things, things Tom had not seen until then but only glimpsed, ordinary straightforward language failed.

 

It was for the best, even had there been some concrete methodology he would never have written it, even during his school years he had known that. Immortality, if it was to be found, must be earned not given or else stolen. There was something altogether too cheap in immortality gained through such easy and vulgar means.

 

Sometimes though, looking back and thinking on it, he wished that there was some way he could describe it. And when he did there was only poetry, where duality was second nature, and a poem read twice never held the same meaning.

 

In the end, as perhaps in all things, Azrael described it best and so it became in time the standard answer Tom would give.

 

“I visited Tralfamadore and found myself unstuck in time.”


	22. Chapter 22

The morning it occurred he was greeted by a too eager and determined Orion Black slapping a letter down onto the kitchen table.

 

The kitchen itself had only become more tacky, the quidditch posters remaining glistening and new with charms for conservation and newer posters finding their way in every couple of months from England. Their small island of wizarding British culture was filled with noise, color, and broomsticks and no matter how many times he saw it Tom never could get used to it.

 

Orion Black grinned over at Tom, as if they truly were friends and comrades instead of merely vaguely tolerating one another for lack of better alternatives. Neither of them had been successful recruiters, Tom giving up before even really starting, and Orion Black failing to convince anyone of the legitimacy of his cause. Three years’ worth of letters, of periodic visits to the ministry, of desperate attempts to gain an audience with the emperor himself, had amounted to little more than wounded pride.

 

Still, Black showed no sign of faltering, and that kind of determination wasn’t easy to keep up in the face of so much failure. If anything rejection only prompted more reckless action; and it would be commendable if it wasn’t so pathetic.

 

“Well, this must be important then.” Tom muttered, more to himself than Orion Black, and began skimming the letters contents even as Black’s eyes continued to bore into him as if this was the defining moment of the mudblood Tom’s existence.

 

There was the usual bureaucratic prattle one could expect from the ministry, but eventually after skimming the first few paragraphs something caught his eye, it wasn’t much. Certainly not the call to action that Orion Black had been all but demanding for the three years they had worked on Mars but it was more than they had ever been given before.

 

“They’re listening, Riddle. Someone’s finally decided to take that bastard in black seriously.” Orion Black said, his grin almost manic, barely waiting for Tom to set down the letter and meet his eye.  

 

There wasn’t talk of sending a spy, an army, or anything that Black had asked for merely a small comment to keep an eye on the emperor and report back regularly. They had been doing as much, or at least Black had been trying to do as much, for years but this was the first time that it was official.

 

“New minister?” Tom asked.

 

Black sneered and threw his hands in the air sitting down in his chair with a look of extreme frustration on his face, “Yes, there’s a new minister. Merlin Riddle, even for a mudblood you are completely hopeless.”

 

Tom didn’t reply merely continued to eye the letter on the table, it would probably mean nothing to Azrael as most things did. The city was always swarming with intelligence agents, so much so that Tom had managed to make a game of it on truly slow days on spotting which one was an agent and which country they worked for. Orion Black attempting to be subtle and informative would be more of a joke than any true threat, but still something in it was a bit too close for comfort. Tom didn’t like the idea of wizarding Britain meddling in Azrael’s affairs.

 

It could just be that the new minister had promised some action on the Ubiquitous front in order to be elected or it could be as Black suggested; that after the five years in which Ubik had existed they were finally taking it seriously.

 

He stood and wandered over to the window, staring out at the morning sunlight, watching at it caught the omnipresent snow on the distant and high peaks of the mountains. “I take it then you’re going to try to arrange a meeting with the emperor again.”

 

After their first official meeting with Azrael they had not met with him again, not having a legitimate enough reason to concern him. Very few magical British citizens wandered into the country and when they did it was usually only for a few hours. Unspeakables, bureaucrats, a few reporters, they came in attempted to see the emperor and left when they realized how difficult that task truly was. Thus far no Ubikian had any desire to immigrate or else even visit magical Britain either, satisfied with Tom’s various descriptions when talking to him informally, and so there was really nothing to discuss with the emperor.

 

Azrael refused to humor diplomats and for that he made Orion Black’s life very difficult at times.

 

“I’ll get a meeting.” Black said with that angry confidence that had carried him through his career thus far, “More than you’ll get done, that’s for sure.”

 

Sometime later Black left with his arrogant determination in full force, that same determination that had prevented him from returning home to his prospective bride and lands sooner, and was almost admirable if it wasn't so terribly misguided. Tom remained behind, staring out the window, and deciding that whatever he could be doing  in an official capacity wasn’t really worth much.

 

He, after all, had no desire to relay the few secrets Azrael had to the ministry. It was a strangely Gryffindor act for him, loyalty, but he had stopped thinking in terms of houses even while he was in Hogwarts and so it didn’t chafe too badly.

 

So he gathered a few of his notebooks and set out for the lake beyond the edge of the city where he could spend a few uninterrupted hours thinking.

 

He had not intended to find his answer that day, although he spent most day searching for it, it had become more of a puzzle than an obsession something to tinker with inside his head shifting this and that thought around until it formed something new. He had not even realized he was close to finding it, but perhaps that was why he did, because most of the truly marking events in his life were a product of serendipity rather than hard work.

 

It was such a small, wordless, and terrible thing that it came to him as an idle thought rather than a revalation.

 

The answer, in simple and understandable terms and thus not an answer at all, was time. 

 

* * *

 

He had not imagined it would be so abrupt, so painful, and so utterly disorienting.

 

On the one hand he was still aware of the instant, the now as it was, Tom Riddle sitting at the edge of the lake with eyes too wide as he drifted inexplicably from himself his mouth dropping open even as he imagined a small untouched switch inside of himself being turned on. As if he had been a room in which only a single candle had been lit and then without warning someone had found the lever to the generator.

 

Another part of himself was sprinting in many other directions as there were an infinite amount of them, not drifting but flowing desperately away and out, only some direction that wasn’t out at all but beyond.

 

Everything was rushing, moving together and apart in a strangely rhythmic pattern, like waves of light or the whirring of a fan. Sometimes he could make out various things, places, people, and they were at once familiar and unfamiliar as he knew that Tom Riddle had never seen most of these before. Sometimes he caught words, echoing in the chasm, until they rang in his ears so loudly that they were almost unintelligible.

 

_“The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy. Look at you: you're the Prodigal Son; you're quite a prize!”_

Great empires and horrors rose in devastation until it seemed that there were only the ruinous empires; great cities made of rubble and decay that still breathed and burned even as there was nothing in them and still he moved forward not quite sure where he was going only that it was best not to linger in these places.

 

_“Fiery the angels fell. Deep thunder rolled around their shoulders... burning with the fires of Orc.”_

 

And so he kept moving in no time and all the time there was, time slipping past his fingertips like air, only barely visible to his eye until finally he reached the end. Or rather what appeared to be the end, for time went on, off into the distance where planets emerged and collapsed, but the empires themselves stopped and withered into dust.

 

And then those words from Azrael again, filled with that melancholy he had only distantly noted at the time but had disregarded, and bitter regret seemed to bleed from every syllable, _“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die.”_

 

He stood on the edge, slowing to a halt, and peered out into the abyss still filled with stars and yet so terribly empty all the same. In the vacuum the scent of smoke and blood lingered until it was almost overwhelming.

 

“Tom,”

 

He turned his head, and there was Azrael, as unchanged as he always was, perpetually still even inside the madness. On his face was a strange expression, a very human expression, one of fear and concern and perhaps even a touch of anger.

 

“What have you done to yourself now?”

 

* * *

 

When he woke later the sun had already set and he was no longer sitting beside the lake.

 

Instead he was in a dark and small chamber, lying across on a bed, a cold piece of cloth resting on his head and the room spinning slightly. Everything felt raw, stripped down to the bone, until there was very little left of him and he knew without even trying that standing or even sitting up was probably beyond him at the moment.

 

A clear and familiar voice cut into his thoughts, “You know, I didn’t believe it was truly possible. I thought I had seen everything, elixers, stones, horcruxes, and everything in between and they have never once worked.”

 

There was a sigh then and Tom faught the nausea and tilted his head so that he could see him. Azrael was sitting in a chair next to the bed, a hand pulling through his thick black hair, and his head shaking as if not even truly talking to Tom at all.

 

With a sigh looked up, his green eyes meeting Tom’s and his lips quirking as if almost amused in spite of himself, “You have a very nasty fever at the moment, one I suspect would have killed anyone else but… Well, I suppose that isn’t really a possibility anymore.”

 

He tried to sit up then, to pull through the pain as well as the chills wracking his body, and Azrael merely watched not helping or hindering his progress only commenting, “I suppose if I said that moving probably wasn’t the best of ideas you wouldn’t listen.”

 

Once upright he leaned against the bedframe for support, closing his eyes and breathing slowly, feeling even as he did so the tug of that place that he had rushed through not so long ago. “What the hell was that?”

 

They both knew what he was referring to but even so Azrael paused before answering, his expression becoming darker, and when he spoke it was in that solemn and authoritative voice that always brought such weight with it.

 

“You walked out of time, to the very end of existence, and stared back.”

 

“That doesn’t mean anything.” Tom said.

 

Azrael’s eyes flashed and he almost immediately snapped back, “It means everything!” He then breathed out as if calming himself, “Tom, even I don’t travel that far.”

 

There was a fire somewhere in the room, Tom couldn’t feel the heat but he could see the shadows of flames dancing on Azrael’s perpetually young features. It was strange, Tom thought to himself, that even now when he was so much older appearing than Azrael the attraction had never diminished. He still looked at the angles of his face, the curve of his neck, and those terribly green eyes.

 

Sweat dripping down his brow, shivering slightly, and pain everywhere he didn’t have the ability to be subtle and the question slipped from him as if there was nothing else in the world he could possibly ask, “And who exactly are you, then?”

 

Azrael stilled, all idle movement, the slight tapping of the feet and the hands stopping instantaneously, and with slow almost jerky movements his head tilted and his eyes met Tom’s. They considered each other for a while, and in those silent moments Tom felt himself drifting again slightly, not too far but enough to notice that while everything else was in motion Azrael was stationary as if an anchor for their surroundings.

 

“I suppose the true answer is that I don’t really know.” The words were quiet and yet in that way that Azrael’s words always did they resounded throughout the room, “I call myself Death, Destroyer of Worlds.”

 

He gave an odd laugh then, almost as if it was forced out of him, one that was half bitterness and relief. The noise was jarring, and Tom felt himself shivering at the sound, but soon enough Azrael was continuing, “You know I practically told you, even in the beginning. For someone so smart… No, it’s not really about intelligence, it’s about wanting to know and you didn’t want to and how can I possibly blame you for that when I did the same myself for so very long?”

 

The smile drifted from his face and he looked up at the ceiling for a moment as if he would find his answers there, “Azrael, Tom, is the name of the angel of death. And, yes, strangely enough I really do think it’s that simple.”

 

He looked back at Tom in expectation, waiting for something that Tom didn’t have, Tom simply stared at him and tried to process those words through his muddled brain. “Death? You’re death?”

 

Azrael looked hesitant then, his mouth slightly open and his eyes distant, and finally he nodded, “Well, yes?”

 

He had never imagined death as a sentient being, something with a face and eyes and expression, to him it had always been a cold mist a dark abyss in which there was nothingness everywhere. Certainly, even in his wildest moments, he had never equated death with Azrael. Somehow, even when everything felt like hell and the room was still spinning, he managed to find it absurdly funny.

 

Azrael listened to Tom as he broke into hysterics with an odd stunned smile on his face as if not quite sure what to do with his expression and that just made Tom laugh harder.

 

As his hysterics died down and his ribs felt as if they’d been torn out of his chest his smile dimmed and he found that in spite of all his suspicions, all his doubt, he was not willing to accept that as an answer. The universe, he wanted to believe, was not that nonsensical; his wandering and fever hazed mind refused to accept it.

 

It must have been written all over his face because Azrael spoke with a distant expression and hesitating words, “It’s… It’s the closest I’ve ever come to a true answer and I’m willing to accept it.”

 

“You don’t know then?” Tom asked.

 

“Does anyone truly know anything in this world, Tom Riddle?” And that bitter smile of his returned for a moment only to dim as he became lost in his thoughts. “It’s not really all that important.”

 

“I would think being death would be fairly important.” And there was his bitterness once his surprise had faded and the words had made their way through his sluggish thoughts so he could actually comprehend them.

 

“You’d think so.” Here the smile cracked into a grin, “But no, I’m afraid it isn’t.”

 

He sighed and regained his more sober expression from before, “However, this is all about me, and I think I’d rather here about you at the moment. What have you done to yourself?”

 

For a moment Tom wondered why Azrael had told him now, when he was in no state to take it seriously or else comprehend it, and if it wasn’t some bad idea of a joke. Perhaps it was only because Tom had seen him, had somehow run through everything and found Azrael at the end of it, or perhaps it was because Tom was now somehow different. Something had happened, even through the fever Tom knew that he had changed somehow, that Tom wasn’t quite the same Tom he used to be only hours before. Tom had broken the game they had been playing and so Azrael in turn had broken his end, the charade was up and it was time for all of them to reveal their true selves.

 

If only he had any idea how he had even gone about it in the first place.

 

Licking his dry lips and doing his best to stay in the moment Tom responded, “I thought you were telling me that.”

 

He couldn’t remember a time seeing Azrael so irritated, angry yes he had seen anger and pain in his eyes but they were all grand and distant things, the lowering of his eyebrows and gritting of his teeth here was positively human.

 

“I know the effects, those are fairly obvious to see, but I have no idea what you did. I only know that I found you wandering around in the fourth dimension past the edge of existence without half a clue of how you got there or where you even going.” His hands were in motion as he spoke and Tom watched them, they seemed almost to belong to a stranger the way they frantically jerked here and there and felt it necessary to move, Azrael had always been far too still.

 

“Well, that’s unfortunate because I have no idea either.”

 

They stared at each other in silence, each having said things the other didn’t quite believe, and Tom simply felt exhausted by all of it. How long had he waited to hear the truth behind the mysterious Hufflepuff? And now, when he finally learned, he was too damn tired to do anything about it. There was a tremendous amount of irony in that; if Tom was willing to acknowledge it.

 

Somewhere in the soft quiet, the light of the fire dancing off Azrael’s face, he drifted back to sleep and in his head there was the image of the universe extending itself out beyond him and at the end of it Azrael with green eyes like death staring back.


	23. Chapter 23

For a while it was a blur of pain and madness. Where reality seemed hazy at the edges and if he tilted his head to the side for too long strange visions passed before his eyes. Never quite as intense as that first moment, so bright they had blinded him even to his sense of self, but alarming all the same.

 

There was some reassurance though. Each time he managed to pull himself out of fevered hallucinations or sleep and into reality Azrael was still somewhere in that room. Sometimes by the bed, sometimes peering out the window into the starlight or the sunset, but always easily found.

 

He had always wondered how far Azrael’s affection extended towards him. There was affection, only in his darkest moments did he doubt that, but he had wondered if it went beyond easy friendship. There were times when Azrael was little more than a shadow in his life, present, but intangible and too distant to be caught. It was nice to know, that when things were truly desperate, that an emperor would stand by the side of his bed.

 

“Do I call you Death, now?” He didn’t ask the first time he woke up, or the second, but rather the first time he could manage to concentrate long enough to have any semblance of a conversation.

 

Blinking he looked over at Tom looking almost as dazed as Tom felt and something bitter bloomed in his eyes, “No, you don’t have to, I’d prefer it if you didn’t actually. You never knew me, as that, and…”

 

He trailed off and wandered away from the window took the seat next to Tom pulling the chair up close to the bed and offered Tom a half smile, “I never realized how obnoxious Orion Black really is.”

 

It was a pitiful attempt to change the subject, almost laughable, but Tom held his tongue and took the bait if only because he was too tired to get into these things as well, “You just realized this?”

 

“On your death bed and still dry as ever, Tom.” Azrael said with a smile that was more relieved than genuine, “He’s very persistent, more than I gave him credit for, he’s also been looking for you.”

 

There it was, Tom hadn’t asked, had almost not wanted to ask but that element of time still hung in the air. Enough time had passed so that Orion Black was actively looking for him even while he was here, passed out in the emperor’s private quarters, unable to even think for extended periods of time. Perhaps it had only been days but Tom had the horrifying thought that it could have been weeks. He looked the same as he had on that day by the lake, his muscles weren’t atrophied and his body not starved despite not eating, but all the same he had changed then and it seemed the old rules didn’t apply.

 

What did immortal really mean at the end of things?

 

“I need to go back, I need to get back and…”

 

Azrael did not interrupt, he did not need to, instead he only looked at Tom and his eyes spoke poems unnumbered. He had seen those eyes so many times before, the color of death he had always thought, and they were but there was so much in them that he had never noticed. In them, reflected so clearly, were all the visions he had seen stretching past the end of existence.

 

“Wait until you can walk, at the very least.” He said pressing Tom back flat onto the bed, “I don’t know what you did to yourself or even how you did it so I can’t say when and if this will pass. You seem better than you were, but we’ll have to wait and see. Don’t worry, we have an eternity and a half to whittle at, these moments are little more than a blink.”

 

How long then, Tom wondered, had Azrael been playing this game to say that with such confidence.

 

“That does not make me feel better.” Tom fell back onto the bed with a sigh, feeling terrible if more coherent than he had before.

 

“No, it probably doesn’t.” Azrael murmured saying it more to himself than to Tom. “It will pass, these things always do.”

 

Before Tom could respond or even really process those words Azrael was leaning back in his chair and speaking again, observing Tom with an odd expression, as if not quite sure what to make of him, “Would you like to hear a story; while we wait for the storm to pass?”

 

“A story, that’s very unlike you.” Tom muttered more to himself than to Azrael his mind already beginning to wander once again.

 

Azrael smiled, a sharp barbed smile that he reserved for himself, and said, “I have told you one of my greatest secrets, Tom, and behind that secret I have a tale to last a thousand years and more.”

 

Tom was silent, giving no response, merely lying back and letting his eyes wander to the ceiling as Azrael’s voice drifted over him, “This is only a small part of that story, a moment like a mayfly, that drifted and passed through my existence until I barely knew it was there at all. It is a story of a princess, a love affair, and a famed ronin and sorcerer from the outer edge of the kingdom…”

 

* * *

 

The trouble with being bed ridden, once he had regained his ability to think for long periods of time, was that it gave him ample time to reflect on his life and that would always lead him down the dangerous path of reflecting on his relationship with Azrael.

 

Things between them had changed once again, in admitting that he wasn’t human Azrael now apparently felt free to act more human than ever before. He told bizarre parables about his life that often didn’t seem to have a point, he made comments that didn’t sound as if they were ripped out of a poetry anthology, and above all else he seemed comfortable around Tom less guarded with his secrets. He smiled more often and those smiles were bright. 

 

Tom liked to think, that for the most part, his teenage hormones had been repressed almost to the point of non-existence. He’d have the occasional awkward sex dream, he’d find himself staring, and sometimes he’d have thoughts but after almost six years of pining after someone who referred to themselves as the destroyer of worlds Tom had more or less resigned himself to distant longing. At least, that was what he liked to think.

 

A wall between them had come tumbling down; Azrael was now reachable and everything came rushing back.

 

He felt like a heart sick school girl and he felt shame and embarrassment creeping through him every time he thought it.

 

It was at one point, lying on bed and staring at the ceiling, listening with half an ear to Death Destroyer of World’s thoughts on immortality and the obtaining of it that Tom realized that he had reached his limit.

 

“I’ve never really understood it, this avoiding of death, I suppose because it’s always been a foreign topic to me. Even when I believed I could die it never terrified me, perhaps because unconsciously I knew that I never would, but all the same… So many different opinions too, you know Albus Dumbledore always referred to it as the next great adventure.”

 

Azrael trailed off in thoughtful silence, leaving Tom to wonder just when Azrael had a heart to heart with Dumbledore on the topic of dying considering the fact that Dumbledore hated Azrael more than he hated Tom. Azrael’s new openness about his past and life did nothing to clear the mystery if anything it just made everything even more confusing than before.

 

But he smiled when he talked about these things, sometimes a bitter smile, but he still smiled and Tom always watched for them and he hated himself for it.

 

He looked so young, Tom had thought it before but the weeks or days he spent in that room really brought it home, Azrael looked so much younger than Tom did now. His face had always been angular for a teenager but he would never have an adult’s jawline, he would always be caught in the midst of puberty, looking almost effeminate without the facial hair. It made him look inhuman, it always had, but all the same he was strangely beautiful for it.

 

He looked like an emperor of Ubik should.

 

And after six years Tom had finally reached the end of his rope.

 

“Azrael, as much as I enjoy your bizarre personal anecdotes about your conversations with Dumbledore there’s something we need to talk about.” Tom sighed, lifting himself up into a sitting position.

 

Perhaps, Tom thought to himself as he looked at Azrael’s puzzled expression, bravery wasn’t really bravery so much as it was exasperation and exhaustion. He had always been afraid of rejection, of realizing that it had all been an illusion, that it was only Tom who felt things and that Azrael felt nothing at all. He had wanted things so desperately to remain as they were, to not be trapped alone with himself, but now he was almost too tired to care.

 

“If it’s about my past, Tom, it’s not always a pleasant story and there are things I would rather not…”

 

Tom cut him off before he could finish, “It’s not about that.”

 

The anxiety in Azrael’s features faded somewhat, dripped from him, blatant relief taking its place. He’d been like that recently as well, relaxed and anxious in the same moment, as if trying to find the grounding beneath him once again now that things had shifted. Always afraid Tom would press at the wrong time and ask the questions that shouldn’t be asked.

 

“Oh, well, then… What is it?”

 

And just like that Tom hesitated, as he always hesitated, because he didn’t know how to phrase it. After knowing someone almost ten years and barely knowing them at all it seemed wrong to put things lightly and yet there was no other way to put them.

 

“You are the only friend I’ve ever had in my entire life.” He started, blurted really, and he wondered if he really wanted to start this conversation with friendship but it was the best plan he had in his head, “No one, and I do mean no one, has ever come as close to me as you have. When you left when we were fifteen, without a word… Goddammit, I’ve liked you for six years and I’m tired of it.”

 

Azrael stared at him blankly, comprehension slowly and unwillingly dawning in his eyes, “What?”

 

“I’ve liked you for six years, since our fifth year before you ran off to stop a world war without anyone’s permission. And for six years I have wondered if you even give a damn, because sometimes you do, but sometimes you don’t. And I am tired, sore, I’m apparently immortal, you’re apparently Death, and I’m just tired of staring and saying nothing!”

 

His words echoed in the room and the silence after them was almost deafening, they stared at each other, and wasn’t it strange how stunned they both looked by the outburst as if neither of them had seen it coming?

 

“Oh Tom, I…” Azrael looked as if he was in pain, as if Tom had stabbed him in the back with a knife, and how could that be possible when Tom was the one dangling from an emotional noose.

 

“You what?”

 

Azrael looked away from him for a moment, at the bare room they were in, and he addressed the lack of furniture when he spoke next, “I was married, once, a very long time ago. I did love her, as much as I could love anyone and yet… Affection, attraction, these things aren’t always enough, Tom. I have so much baggage trailing behind me that I lose track of it myself…”

 

“You think I don’t know that?” Tom asked almost unthinkingly as his mind caught bitterly on the image of married, of Azrael somehow being married, and how could he have been married since they met when they were both eleven? And yet he couldn’t ask about that because how did one ask their best friend about the wife they never knew existed?

 

A wife, a wife he had loved, and Tom had never even guessed.

 

Azrael looked back at him and smiled his trademark bitter smile that was more cutting than anything he would allow himself to say, “I think you’re beginning to understand it. You may have made yourself immortal, Tom, for reasons I still don’t understand but that doesn’t make you me.”

 

“I shouldn’t have to be you.”

 

“You shouldn’t want to, it isn’t easy.” Here he laughed and shook his head as if he had just told some particularly witty joke. The laughter died quickly and his expression became sober once again, “I have lived for thousands of years, I have seen empires rise and crumble into dust, I have watched my own children become indifferent to me and then die, I have seen the end of humanity, and I will no doubt see these things all again. I am terribly old, Tom, and I always feel it. I know that I am static, that I choose to be static, but all the same I feel it.”

 

It was in a softer voice, one that pleaded with Tom to understand, that he continued, “Humanity doesn’t always suit me, sometimes it’s stretched thin…like butter scraped over too much bread… Ideas seem easy, you don’t think about the details.”

 

He looked directly into Tom’s eyes and asked, “Tom, can’t we leave things as they are?”  

 

There was a slowly burning anger in his heart, one that consumed him, and he found listening to that question that there was only one answer he could give. He had left things as they were long enough, for years he had left things, he had let his life move past him and he couldn’t let it fester anymore.

 

Things had changed, he had walked to the edge of the universe and back, there was no more sitting still.

 

“No, we can’t.”

 

He stood then, weakly, leaning against the wall for support and glaring at Azrael’s move to help him. They looked at each other for a moment, Tom sweating and shaking but still standing on his own two feet, and Azrael looking at him with an expression more bitter than pitying but almost worse for it.

 

A wife that he had loved and thousands of years spent in between; it was strangely fitting for Azrael.

 

He left without looking back or saying goodbye.


	24. Chapter 24

On his return to his quarters, hobbling down the streets of Ubik, stopping at every street lamp and corner to catch his breath he hadn’t given much thought to the state of the world around him. It was only in the back of his mind that he noticed the light snowfall, out of season, casting small white shadows against the soft glow of the street lamps.

 

His thoughts were occupied by other seemingly greater things. One was the constant pain and dizziness at walking more in one hour than he had in the past weeks, each step making him wonder if he couldn’t just give up, just sit down and wait for someone to find him. The other was his most recent conversation with Azrael, which played itself behind his eyes every time he stopped for a few seconds, hounding him forward so he didn’t have to look at that damned expression anymore.

 

He would not go back there, he would not crawl back to Azrael’s feet, even if he was in a perpetual state of dying he would not sink to that.

 

“A wife,” He whispered to himself as he leaned on a wall at one point, “He had a wife.”

 

He stopped to stare up at the stars, leaning against a wall and feeling the warmth of the runes as they ran through the walls, and he couldn’t help but notice how bright they looked in the dark as if Azrael could not even allow light pollution to make them fade.

 

Had he strung stars like pearls in her hair, so that when she smiled she also glowed?

 

And he laughed because it was as funny as it was absurd, Azrael’s hypothetical wife, the empress of Ubik or whatever Ubik had been back…

 

Strange how he still couldn’t answer that question. So many walls came crumbling down but he still knew next to nothing about him, odd stories out of context, stray facts (a wife), but nothing more than that.

 

Death, Destroy of Worlds, why would anyone call themselves such a thing? It was worse than Lord Voldemort, worse that “Flight from Death” and Tom had been fourteen and practically high on hopeful desperation, so how could Azrael say it with such seriousness?

 

How could Tom be expected to refer to him, to the babbling mysterious Hufflepuff he had once gone to school with, as that?

 

And that look in his eyes, not quite pity, not quite dismissal, that final look and that final plea, _“Can’t we leave things as they are, Tom?”_

 

Well, Tom wasn’t quite willing to think on that.

 

Regardless of the physical pain, the feeling that he was descending into madness, and his constant stops to catch his breath he eventually made it back to his and Orion Black’s shared flat.

 

He was reminded, on opening the door, that he had been gone for quite some time.

 

The quidditch posters had been removed from the walls, their garish tackiness making the room seem bare and almost empty, he had grown used to the bright reds and greens of quidditch uniforms and the golden sight of the snitch. Little had replaced them, the only new thing was a pile of books scattered and opened on the table, in such disarray that Tom almost winced at the sight. Standing above them, staring down with hard eyes at open text, was Orion Black.

 

At the sound of his entrance Black looked up, his eyes cold and hard, and then widening in shock at the sight of him, “Riddle…”

 

And then after a pause a distant whisper, “I thought they killed you off… You lucky bastard, you’re really still alive.”

 

Tom took a moment to observe him from the doorway before responding. He looked thinner, harsher, his cheeks had hollowed and his eyes were lined in shadows. His clothing, while still fine wizarding British material, was less extravagant than he usually went for and was instead something closer to what Tom might wear; if Tom had money or interest in expensive wizarding robes.

 

He had become very serious since Tom was gone.

 

“Alas, no, I was merely severely ill.” Tom said making his way over to the table. “I see that you are doing well enough.”

 

Black watched him collapse into the chair, taking in his pale and sweating face, and asked without preamble or answering Tom’s own question, “Poison?”

 

“No.” Tom replied thinly, “Just ill.”

 

Black seemed to consider this for a moment, perhaps deciding whether this news was good or bad, through the daze of finding Tom alive, and then he seemed to decide that he didn’t really care and was more annoyed than anything else, “You’ve been gone for weeks, I’ve already declared you as dead with the government, it’ll be a hassle to correct the paperwork.”

 

It had been a trying morning, he was already upset, and he wondered if Orion Black realized just how much he was tempting fate in telling an already incensed Tom Riddle that he wasn’t even worth the piles of bureaucratic paperwork to correct his death.

 

Their eyes met and Black did flinch momentarily beneath Tom’s gaze, realizing he may have gone too far this time, but he said nothing else.

 

(Some things never did change after all, there was some comfort in that.)

 

Still, as the room spun, sweat dripped from his brow, and nausea pooled in his stomach he was in no condition to take anyone in a duel. And what would be the point? He’d decided with the death of Voldemort that these petty battles with the aristocracy were unworthy of his time. He wouldn’t descend to this now, simply because Black was more insulting than usual, because Azrael had a wife.

 

“Well, I’m not dead, as you can clearly see.” Tom said breaking the silence and tension between them, “Also, you seem more… studious than before.”

 

Black didn’t respond right away, and again their eyes met each assessing the other, making Tom wonder if he really would be dueling Orion Black in this small apartment, “An English wizard went missing Tom, that’s no small matter, and Wizarding Britain finally decided that it was time to put things into motion.”

 

“Things into motion?” Tom repeated dully.

 

This wasn’t a planned coup, a revolution, a spy, none of the plans he had heard and discarded before. It was vague but there was something about the way Black was looking at him that made him stiffen. It was his eyes, Tom knew those eyes, they were Tom’s eyes; the eyes he’d had in the Chamber of Secrets when he’d realized enough was enough.

 

“The emperor is a very clever man and also a very powerful one. Perhaps, as you’ve suggested, he’s benign but what if he isn’t? Are we really going to let all these muggles have access to our secrets, our culture? Are we going to let this blood-traitor wizard destroy everything we stand for?” Black leaned in close to him, too close for comfort, and smiled thinly.

 

“No, Riddle, we won’t. We English aren’t the pushovers they take us for and we’ll give them all the hell we have. He may be docile now but we can’t take the chance that he’ll be docile later.”

 

Tom felt something deep in his stomach freeze and he couldn’t help but think that Orion Black really meant what he said. These weren’t the words of a boy, he’d been given orders and he meant to see them through, as Black had said weeks before the ministry was finally taking Azrael seriously.

 

“Now that you are alive I have a little job for you.” Black said throwing a book at Tom, “You’re good with runes, wards, that kind of thing, right?”

 

“Yes.” Tom replied shortly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

 

“I need you to breach some wards.”

 

The cold feeling spread slightly, “Which wards?”

 

Again Black considered him, searching for something in his features and then asked out of the blue, “Where were you, anyway?”

 

Funny, Tom had assumed that’d be the first question out of his mouth, perhaps Orion Black hadn’t changed that much; he still seemed as self-centered as ever.

 

“I checked the hospitals, you know, and everywhere else I could think of.” He added when Tom didn’t answer.

 

“I was bedridden, at a friend’s.” Tom stated.

 

Black’s eyebrows raised and his expression became at once incredibly dubious, “You have friends?”

 

He supposed it would be surprising, he was known to be solitary in school, Azrael had been his only real companion and beyond that the closest relationship he had to anyone was Minerva McGonagall. Still, it was a little insulting just how surprising Black seemed to find it.

 

“Yes, Black, I have a few friends.” Tom replied snidely.

 

Black’s expression darkened and his lips pursed, “You’d best be getting rid of those friends Riddle.”

 

In his head the unbidden image of Azrael came, not as he’d last seen him but the Azrael he always envisioned, and against all rationality that feeling of foreboding grew starker than before.

 

“I’ll fix your paperwork, tell the ministry you’re not dead and all that, and in the meantime you learn how to breach my wards.”

 

* * *

 

He had not realized that Orion Black possessed the slightest capacity to be clever.

 

It wasn’t overwhelmingly clever, nothing to be in awe of, but nevertheless Tom hadn’t realized he had any talent for manipulation at all.

 

Black hadn’t come out and said it, not directly, but Tom’s disappearance was highly suspicious. Britain wasn’t exactly in a state of war with Ubik but it was never the less expected that its diplomats didn’t simply disappear for weeks on end only to reappear later severely ill and unable to say exactly where they’d been.

 

Tom didn’t know the exact consequences for treason or else conspiracy, wizarding Britain had never bothered to crack down on the Grindlewald supporters even after his defeat, but he suspected it would be unpleasant and that if Black chose to do so he could very easily have Tom convicted.

 

Of course, Tom could wipe his memories. Erase his period of absence and make it seem that he had never left but then Black had already sent in his report of Tom’s death. Tom would then either be stranded in Ubik without identity or would somehow have to explain his reappearance and Black’s mistaken conclusions.

 

For a seemingly small price Black had more or less agreed to sweep whatever secrets Tom was holding under the carpet. He’d fix things in the ministry, reopen Tom’s bank accounts, make sure that no questions were asked and in return…

 

In return Tom would complete a vaguely explained task that could have potentially devastating consequences.

 

He spent the week after his reemergence to the land of the living sitting on his own bed furiously sketching out Azrael’s ward design and his own attempts to crack it. Black probably didn’t realize it, was too caught up in his own image of the emperor of Ubik to bother noticing, but Azrael’s ward systems were very good.

 

As a Hogwarts student Tom had glimpsed Azrael’s talent and genius but he’d never truly seen it. As insulting as he’d found it at the time Hogwarts really was nothing to Azrael, certainly he never learned anything there. Azrael’s wards were a reminder to Tom of just how good at magic he really was.

 

It was more than raw power, as he had displayed in ending the war, there was also an elegance and efficiency in the design that could not be underestimated.

 

Breaking through Merlin’s wards might have been an easier task.

 

The first issue was that they weren’t in the familiar Elder Futhark script but rather that language that Azrael knew and sometimes spoke that contained many more characters and seemed to have an almost infinite amount of meanings. The second was that Azrael’s runes were very versatile and more than that dynamic, they reacted to their environment, they were not static symbols inscribed with only a single meaning and thus could perform many different tasks at the same time.

 

And every time he thought about them he couldn’t help but want to punch Azrael in the face for making his life so needlessly difficult.

 

“It would help if I knew precisely what I was doing this for.” Tom mentioned one morning to Black.

 

Black was furiously writing a letter to the ministry, one of which would correct Tom Riddle’s deceased status, and didn’t even bother to look up.

 

“Are you saying you can’t do it?”

 

“I am saying that it is very difficult and it might be done faster if I knew something beyond the general idea of what I’m doing.” Tom said through gritted teeth.

 

Black appeared to consider this for a moment but ultimately, as he always did, he decided that it was best Tom didn’t know and continued writing.

 

“Just get it done.”

 

So Tom worked and as he did he considered just what it was that Black, and the ministry behind him had in mind. Whatever it was it would be a decisive blow, something they thought Azrael would not have time to recover from, or something that would hurt his image beyond repair.

 

It could be the parliament, that would certainly be devastating, or perhaps it would be something else.

 

He was getting better, he’d been on the mend back with Azrael as well, but it was still difficult to think sometimes and certainly working on the warding problem wasn’t doing wonders for him either.

 

Sometimes he wondered how Azrael was faring, he hadn’t seen him since that last time, and it wasn’t a long stretch of time for them but all the same it had been such an abrupt ending. But then, Tom wasn’t really sure that he wanted to see Azrael again, not until things had faded and calmed a little.

 

Not until he could forget that damned final expression in those green eyes.

 

And perhaps part of him had this coming, because things could not stay as they were, you could not remain in limbo for all eternity! Azrael himself had said it, years ago in the orphanage, and so surely he realized that these moments were not sustainable.

 

Ultimately Azrael could handle himself, Tom would break through his runes because he was sure the emperor had fail-safes beyond that, even if Black failed to realize it. Ubik had been created so things did not get out of hand and Azrael wouldn’t allow Tom or anyone else to meddle with that so easily.

 

At least, that was what he told himself as he continued to work.

 

* * *

 

He finished a few weeks later, after much hounding and threatening from Black. It appeared there was some unspoken deadline Tom needed to be finished by and every day that they got closer Black became more erratic.

 

Still it was done, eventually.

 

He threw the pages down onto the table in front of Black, “Here you are, as asked for, a breach in the emperor’s standard wards.”

 

It wasn’t his best work, most of it was a bit of a hack job, and it only really applied to standard building wards, but it would do.

 

“And here I thought you were all talk.” Black said a relieved grin flashing across his face as he flipped through the documentation

 

It was almost sad how little Tom cared about that statement and all others that Black made.

 

“It’ll work?” Black asked.

 

“I wouldn’t have delivered it to you if it didn’t.”

 

“Excellent.” Black stopped flipping through and began stuffing it into the pocket of his robes, “You still seem a bit ill so you probably don’t want to show up in person.”

 

Tom said nothing to this simply let Black assume what he would about Tom’s condition, Black didn’t seem to expect an answer anyway. Tom meanwhile found himself staring at the sheets coldly wondering what had really prompted him to solve this little problem for Black.

 

He was angry at Azrael, frustrated, every time he thought back to that final conversation something in him burned. Everything was still so warped for him about the man; the things he now knew meant nothing and that final grating conversation always played in his ears. A wife, he’d said.

 

It wasn’t like the bouts of temper he’d had as a child or even as a Hogwarts student, where rage had colored everything until there was no room for reason, but it was a dangerous emotion all the same. Now that he was done with his solution he was wondering if this wasn’t Tom Riddle’s unconscious form of payback.

 

It wouldn’t be lasting, it wouldn’t be serious, Azrael wouldn’t allow it but it would be something to let him know that things could not simply be brushed over. You couldn’t simply say that you had a wife, that you were Death, and then say nothing at all. You were not allowed to crush his opinions and emotions as if he was a wayward child who did not understand the situation he was in.

 

There had to be some form of reckoning.

 

And yet there was still that feeling of unease as he watched the papers disappear from sight.

 

“Good work, Tom, I’ll put in a good word for you provided everything goes well.”

 

And with a grin Black was out the door leaving Tom staring behind him with cold eyes wondering what it would mean if all went well.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, a few weeks before the opening of Ubik’s only magical school, the building shuddered as if under the weight of a heavy blow and for a moment the words that rushed like blood through its veins turned black.

 

It wasn’t until the emperor placed a single hand on the building that it flared to life once more as if nothing had happened in the first place.

 

But they said that the expression in his eyes, as he looked first at the building and then his people said far too many words of murmuring disappointment and grief.


	25. Chapter 25

Azrael hadn’t wanted to build a magical school, not when he first created Ubik, it had been Tom who had said that it would be necessary.

 

Tom still didn’t understand why Azrael had been so hesitant there when he had set up many other schools within Ubik without a second’s thought. Perhaps it came down to his brand of magic versus the more conventional English style, perhaps he simply did not wish to teach so many students, it could be any number of things. Either way, when Tom had first suggested it, years ago Azrael had shortly said no and that was the end of it.

 

But in five years there were enough muggle born children or half taught children under other systems that it had become clear that some sort of magical education was necessary. Many had come to Ubik, had left their own societies in desperation, precisely because they had heard stories of a man so gifted it seemed as if he produced miracles.

 

Azrael had at first planned to hire faculty from abroad but he slowly came to realize that this was not what people wanted and that they would not come in the first place so, with a small entering class, Azrael would teach the first few years himself and then hire on faculty from his more promising students.

 

“I’ve never actually been a professor before.” Azrael had admitted to Tom in a sort of stunned manner; as if he didn’t quite believe it himself. “I’ve only ever taken one apprentice at a time and they were all very gifted in their own way before they ever came to me…”

 

“You might want to try being a little less philosophical and more practical.” Tom had replied snidely earning something of an irritated glance from Azrael.

 

Regardless of doubt though, of uncertainty, Azrael planned to go through with it and sometimes when they were talking about the subject there’d be a small and tentative smile on his face. As if he was looking forward to a new experience.

 

At least, he had been until…

 

It was not the standing army that Black imagined but in retrospect it seemed there was no target more glaring than that magical school.

 

So Tom shouldn’t have been surprised, should have expected it when Black had contracted his services, but all the same… All the same he hadn’t even thought that they would stoop to that.

 

Tom would only learn what happened when Black came into their shared quarters in a frenzy, “You mudblood bastard, it didn’t work!”

 

Tom had been sitting at the table, attempting to read a book, but his mind scattered and elsewhere thinking on current events; on Azrael. His thoughts were always drifting towards the emperor, a slow and poignant sort of motion, like the first flakes of snow on a cold winter’s night. It was a distant feeling yet it lingered all the same and he couldn’t quite manage to shake himself from it.

 

Tom startled and turned to face Black taking in his flushed cheeks and frantic expression, “What did you do?”

 

But Black wasn’t looking at him, was glaring at nothing, and walked past Tom into his own room slamming the door without answering Tom’s question. For a minute or so he waited for Black to return but there was no sign he was coming back and so Tom hesitantly stood, closed his book, and made his way to the door.

 

He opened it to the sight of Black, a suitcase, and a frenzy of desperate packing the likes of which Tom had never seen. 

 

“I was shutting down that school, that magic school he was building, and you were supposed to get through the wards!” Black said harshly between haphazardly stuffing in books, posters, clothing, and whatever else would fit in the thing.

 

“What happened?”  Tom repeated, his voice sounding dazed even to himself.

 

(And he’d wondered, for a moment, if it was as terrible as he’d thought it could be; if he hadn’t just made some irreversible mistake.)

 

Black described the events tersely, between obscenities and packing, rushing the words together, “Well it was going all bloody fine at first but then the emperor walks up and…”

 

“I made it through the wards, you never told me the emperor himself would be there.” Tom replied quickly, but if the emperor was there, if Azrael was there then it couldn’t have gone too badly. For Britain yes, but no one was dead, nothing was truly destroyed only…

 

“Of course the bloody emperor was going to be there!” Black screamed before calming himself, letting the rage simmer quietly, “You can forget going back to Britain, I’ll tell them about your little disappearing act, how you came out of nowhere…”

 

He was smiling as he said it, as if that was the only thing that was good about the situation, that Tom was going to be declared a spy and possibly sent to Azkaban or wherever it was traitors went.

 

There was no thought in it only the impulse but it had been one that he’d denied for the three years he had been working with Black. He brought his wand out and pointed it directly at the other man, leaving him to stare at it, at Tom with half-remembered fear.

 

“I am not responsible for your grievous mistakes.” Tom said slowly, “And I have suffered your idiocy for too many years to tolerate it now.”

 

“You wouldn’t dare.” Black stated but his eyes held more doubt than he wanted to show.

 

“Wouldn’t I, Black?” Tom felt a smile creep onto his face, one that had been repressed for a very long time, since Tom had thought of becoming Voldemort, “I’ve never liked you. I hated you when you were an idiot schoolboy joking with his friends and living off your land and your wealth, and I hate you now. You think your blood, your money, your connections protect you but we’re very far from Britain and you’ve screwed yourself over in ways I can’t even begin to describe.”

 

Tom held him there, under wandpoint, and thought how easy it would be to never have to deal with Orion Black again. It was the same as killing a rat, a flash of green light, a bit of conviction, and it was done.

 

Destruction, death, they were so very easy.

 

“So do it then.” Black said, a small laugh escaping him, “Do it you slimy bastard…”

 

In Black’s eyes Tom could see the beginning motions of the wand movement reflected and though Black was reaching for his own wand his movements were much too slow and they both knew it.

 

And then the wands were knocked out of both of their hands and they both turned from each other to face none other than the emperor of Ubik.

 

“It has been some time, hasn’t it?” Azrael asked, a ghost of a smile on his lips, but his eyes were very dark and colder than Tom had ever seen them. For a moment he simply stood in the doorway to Orion Black’s room, taking in the quidditch posters, the wrinkled clothing thrown into a single case, and said nothing. Then, with a slow deliberateness, he moved forward until he was standing between them.

 

“I’m sorry to interrupt but I’m afraid I have business to discuss with you gentlemen.”

 

Both Black and Tom said nothing to this. Black slowly collapsed onto the bed, his face turning a terrible shade of white and it seemed as if he couldn’t look away from Azrael; his hands were shaking and he made no attempt to hide it.

 

Tom, for his own part, could only stand there and watch.

 

It was the first time Tom had seen him since he had left that room and though it had not been all that long ago he felt as if it had somehow been longer than those months in his fifth year. When he looked at Tom it was as if all feeling, all familiarity, had been stripped from him so that all that remained was the cold.

 

Tom felt that there should be something to say, something worth saying, but he couldn’t think of anything. “I’m sorry”, seemed pointless and almost petty; so there was nothing to say.

 

“I’m afraid you are no longer welcome here.” Azrael said, “From this day on the nation of Ubik is cutting the few ties we have with Magical Britain. There will be no more embassy, visas, or any form of travel or communication. We will not import your products and in turn you will have no access to ours; this is the end for us.”

 

He eyed them both for a moment, many things left unsaid in his gaze, and then quietly he added, “I would suggest you start packing quickly.”

 

Black laughed, breaking into hysterics as he placed his head into his hands, wiping the cold sweat from his brow, “That’s all? You’re just deporting us? That’s all you’re going to do?”

 

Azrael offered him a somewhat bitter smile, “Yes, Mr. Black, that is all I am going to do.”

 

Black stood, brushing off his clothing, still laughing and shaking his head, “And they said you were fearsome… You’re really nothing but a pushover, aren’t you?”

 

Azrael’s eyes narrowed and a spark of irritation flickered within them, “No one is dead, the building is restored, and you are little more than a child. My people and I have nothing to benefit from your death and imprisonment, go home Mr. Black.”

 

Then Azrael turned from Black to Tom, and his eyes were like knives, “And you too, Mr. Riddle.”

 

He had wondered if this might happen, when he had been working on Orion’s problem, had thought it could. He’d imagined what this moment, that expression on his face, might look like but all the same…

 

All the same, Tom had never felt like this before.

 

Not even when he had killed the basilisk, not even when he had realized that Voldemort meant nothing, he had never felt this empty.

 

“I hope you’ve packed enough.”

 

It was as if they were words in a book, or a play, too far removed from him to be real. It wasn’t until he began feeling the pulls of apparition, until Azrael turned to look at him and offered him one final enigmatic smile, that Tom realized he was leaving at all.

 

“Goodbye for now, my friend.”

 

And then neither Tom nor Black were in Ubik.

 

* * *

 

An almost distant memory from only a few years before.

 

There had been lightheartedness in his step, in spite of obstacles, there had been a smile on his face. He had been travelling outside of the city, determined to get away from work for a day, although he wasn’t sure quite where he was going. Only that it would be further than he had ever gone in Ubik before.

 

“Happy birthday, Tom.”

 

He turned in surprise and there was Azrael smiling at him warmly.

 

“Why must you appear out of nowhere like that?” Tom asked and Azrael only shrugged.

 

“What’s the point of being a mysterious emperor if you aren’t allowed to be mysterious?” Azrael said before brushing off his own joking comment by asking, “So, Tom how does it feel to be twenty?”

 

Tom sighed, looking out at his surroundings, “Oh, much the same as being nineteen or even eighteen I suppose. Nothing all that grand about it.”

 

Azrael looked as if he had something to say to that, some words of wisdom to impart, but he shook his head and asked some other question instead, “So, Tom, any idea where you’re going?”

 

Tom looked out in the direction he had been heading, nothing remarkable about it, a path towards the mountains and past the lake. The only new thing was that it was further than he had walked before, he had never strayed too deeply into the Ubiquitous wilderness.

 

“Well, there aren’t any other cities on this planet besides the one, is there?” Tom asked and Azrael nodded in affirmation, that there was only the one city of Ubik that was becoming more and more densely populated over the years.

 

“Then I have no idea.” Tom concluded and resumed walking this time Azrael joining him.

 

“Hm,” Azrael said after some time, “You know, I don’t think I’ve travelled that far around the planet either. Well, not as Ubik at any rate.”

 

Tom’s eyebrows raised, since the whole planet was made in Azrael’s image, it was hard to believe he hadn’t seen all of it first.

 

“It’s true,” Azrael responded to his expression, “Most of this, these are spun from magic or else dreams and visions, it doesn’t mean I’ve seen all of it for myself. I haven’t had the time.”

 

“Well, then, some day you and I will have to see it together.” Tom found himself saying, looking away from Azrael, feeling a blush creeping across his cheeks. And just when he’d thought he’d gotten over physical reactions like this; it was still mortifying.

 

When he did manage to look back at Azrael he was greeted with a very kind smile, a tender smile, and Azrael said, “Yes, we will.”

 

* * *

 

“Do you know where you’re going, Tom?”


	26. Chapter 26

 

It had been several years since he had seen Minerva McGonagall, since their graduation, and she had hardly changed at all. She was still that too proud, dark haired, Scottish, who was still far too interested in quidditch for anyone of her intelligence.

 

He had not imagined that he would seek out her company or that he would find himself standing before her door with a dazed expression. It was raining in Scotland, a light spring time drizzle, and he couldn’t help but wonder at the fact that it had been such a very long time since he had seen a consistent season.

 

How many years had it been since he’d set foot on Earth?

 

“Tom?” She asked as she opened the door, her eyebrows raising as she took in the sight of him, she must not have expected this moment either.

 

He’d tried to make it very clear in every letter, in every conversation, that any relationship they had was reluctant at best on his end. That he did not need her, did not truly need anyone, especially anyone who wasn’t secretly Death. And yet, when he’d been sitting in the Ministry, staring at walls and thinking of where he could possibly go his mind had eventually wandered to her.

 

“I… I have nowhere else to go.” He said almost hesitantly still feeling lost in that fog and then handed her the letter, the response to her last letter to him, which he had never gotten around to sending.

 

She practically dragged him into the house and into an overcrowded, small, living room filled with more books than he could keep track of. She really had become something of an academic in the years after Hogwarts, he found himself thinking as he searched through the titles, all advanced material on Transfiguration that he himself had only skimmed while in Ubik. She had told him that she was almost done with her apprenticeship, had only a year or so left, and then like him she would be thrown out into the real world with the sharks.

 

Soon enough she brought a rather strong brew of tea out of the kitchen and asked him a question, “So, you’re back from Mars then.”

 

“Yes, things did not end well…” Tom said and she scoffed at that as if Tom had unwittingly said something fairly funny.

 

“Really, Tom, even down here we knew Ubik was trouble.” She looked up at the ceiling then, as if she could see past the light and wood to where Mars hung in the distance, “Should never trust a Martian, finally that centaur gibberish starts making some sense. Of course, most divination is still poppycock.”

 

“It wasn’t them.” Tom said shaking his head, “It was us.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

And he wondered if he should tell her that the government had ordered Black to destroy a school, that he had intended to cripple a nation of refugees, to possibly sacrifice the lives of wizarding children inside of that building if he had been successful. Tom had found himself wondering, as he’d made his way from London to Minerva’s door, just how far England would go to ensure that Ubik could never possibly become a threat.

 

England had never meant to give Ubik any chances even when Azrael had extended every opportunity to them.

 

“Haven’t you noticed, Minerva, how terrible our government really is?” He asked instead and her lips pursed as if she was thinking over that. She was probably thinking over the situation with the muggle-borns, perhaps Azkaban, and maybe even the power wielded by the Wizengamot but she didn’t seem to come up with an answer. She still believed in Magical Great Britain and the optimism of wizards; Tom was not so inclined.

 

He decided to change topics, to get to the point of why he had come to visit with no warning, “I’ve been dismissed, to be expected really.” 

 

“They dismissed you?” She shouted, her famous Scottish temper coming to light at the injustice of his situation. After all, from what she knew, it was hardly his fault the whole thing had fell to pieces.

 

Either way Tom would have been fired, if he’d denied Black, or if he went along with his plans. It seemed that Tom was never destined to hold a constant job at the ministry; there never was supposed to be an ambassador of Ubik. He wondered if Azrael had suspected it would come to this, there were times when he had been optimistic, but there were other days where he would look so resigned when Tom spoke of the English wizarding community.

 

As if he expected nothing more from then at the end of things.

 

“As I said, to be expected really.” He said with a small ironic smile that Minerva McGonagall wasn’t finding in any way shape or form amusing.

 

He was lucky he wasn’t in Azkaban or exiled from England. In the end he still terrified Black enough that he hadn’t been willing to talk, however when both he and Black were dropped from their positions only Black had an easy time finding a new career within the Ministry. In time even he would no doubt retire to take on his position in the Wizengamot as head of the house of Black and it would be as if the Ubik debacle had never happened.

 

As for Tom Riddle, there now existed a black mark on his record and it would never be extinguished; always the word Ubik would haunt his name like a shadow.

 

However, Tom had no wish to return to bureaucracy. Even in Ubik he had barely tolerated it and hated it with a passion on other days; most of his time abroad had been spent researching as he pretended to do his job. Even if they could offer him Minister of Magic he would refuse to take it; he had seen that life for what it really was.

 

There was nothing, he realized, more despicable and pathetic than politics.

 

“What are you going to do now?” She asked, bringing him out of his thoughts and to the true question, the one he had been asking himself as soon as he’d returned home.

 

What now, Tom? Where do you go now, Tom? Where do you go when you’ve burned all your bridges?

 

“I have no idea, do you mind if I stay here until I figure it out?”  And it was embarrassing, how much he needed and wanted her to say yes, because as far as he could tell this was the end of the line.  

 

Minerva McGonagall, the proud Gryffindor friend he’d never really wanted, what had the world come to? And to his relief she didn’t hesitate, looked confused at why he even felt he needed to ask, and instead immediately said, “Of course, I’m not about to throw you out on the streets am I?”

 

He was too exhausted to be proud, to have shame, so all he felt was a sort of distant resignation that this was the way things would play out for now.

 

“Good.” It was the only thing he could think to say to her.

 

* * *

 

Living with Minerva McGonagall was an interesting experience. She lived in a small flat in Hogsmede, only a short distance from the school, and so in a way it was like Tom had never really left.

 

It wasn’t like having Black for a roommate, for one thing Minerva actually liked him where he and Black had tolerated each other at best. The other was that Minerva didn’t tolerate depression, and whenever he showed signs of lingering in the house too long or picking up what she considered to be odd hobbies she demanded he go out job hunting or else attend a school quidditch game with her.

 

After a few weeks, to Tom’s everlasting horror, many students had asked if Tom was her secret boyfriend.

 

She had no idea how perilously close she had come to death or serious injury on many occasions.

 

She also loved to talk, about her work with Albus Dumbledore, his life on Mars in the past three years, and many things she just had no business knowing about. Like Tom’s love life.

 

“So, Tom, you never did manage to find a date in Hogwarts.” Minerva prompted one night over dinner with a sly raise of the eyebrows, he wondered if she thought she was being subtle. No wonder she had been sorted as far away from Slytherin as one could possibly get.

 

“You make it sound like I was trying, if you remember, I had plenty of opportunities.” He didn’t even have to look at her and he knew she was blushing; it was so terribly easy to pick on Minerva McGonagall like an old almost forgotten habit. He remembered the days when he could induce a Scottish fit by only bringing up the subject of quidditch.

 

“You’re a pig, Riddle.”

 

“I try.”

 

Bickering with Minerva McGonagall, it was surprisingly refreshing, all they needed was a cryptic Azrael staring off into the distance and it would be like old times.

 

“Any luck in Ubik?” She asked, and there it was, the face he had been trying to repress for weeks. Azrael, how was it that he always ended up thinking about him, even when he was hundreds of thousands of miles away form him?

 

“No.” He said shortly and with a glance that told her to leave it she looked away, seeming to get the message, that whatever had happened on Ubik romance wise was not to be touched.

 

There was an awkward silence where they only listened to the clinking of silverware and glasses.

 

“Well, I think you should.” She said suddenly, with fierce insistence.

 

“Should what?” Tom asked.

 

“Find yourself a nice, intelligent, girl who would get you in line and keep you out of trouble. That’s your trouble Tom Riddle, you’re too smart for your own good, and it gets you in nasty situations like working on Mars. Tom, what respectable wizard would ever want to set foot on another planet?” That was one way to phrase it, and he supposed she had a point, it would have been easier in many ways if he had been stupid and lacked ambition. The Hufflepuff Tom Riddle would no doubt be more content with his current lot; and probably wouldn’t have been thrown out of a country by his best friend.

 

“Anyone in mind?” He asked pointedly, looking directly at her, and there it was, the blush. Neither of them could forget that she had once asked him on a date in their fifth year, after all. He would bet, that if he dug deep enough, those feelings had never quite been repressed though he had made no motion to reciprocate them.

 

“Well… I…” She trailed off and then she realized she was being had at the sight of his smile.

 

“I’m a pig, Minerva?” He asked, taking the words right out of her mouth.

 

“Forget what I said, Riddle, no one would put up with you!”

 

Probably true, they’d put up with the mask, the Prince Charming disguise he’d taken to wearing in Hogwarts. But how many of them would put up with him beyond it? Would Minerva be so eager to keep him in her house if he knew that he supported the Empire of Ubik far more than he did Magical Britain, that he believed in the goodwill of the emperor more than he believed in the Wizengamot or the Minister of Magic? Would she put up with him if she knew that he had intended to kill, had caused death through his apathy, and that he had no qualms killing again if he felt it was necessary?

 

That he had raised his wand to Orion Black with the intent to snuff him out and would not have hesitated had Azrael arrived a second later.

 

How close to Tom Riddle could a person truly stand?

 

“And that, Minerva McGonagall, is why I don’t date.” He summarized, he was expecting some sort of flustered agreement but she was looking at him sadly, as if that was the most pitiful thing she had ever heard.

 

“You’re a good man, Tom.” She said, and he could see that she meant it, that she would insist upon it if someone asked her.

 

“Where on Earth did you get an idea like that?” Tom asked, truly blindsided by those simple words, ones he had never believed himself.

 

“You may not believe it, Tom, but you are. I know it.” She said, smiling to herself as she said it, as if she knew some secret he didn’t. His secret well of goodness stored in his soul that he himself wasn’t even aware of.

 

“Slytherin, remember, cold and aloof and only concerned with my own ambitions.” He said pointing to himself, normally for a Gryffindor that was enough an argument, but her smile just grew and she shook her head refusing to answer.

 

Of course, she knew only what he’d shown her, and that was a far cry from what he truly was. So how far did her opinions truly count?

 

“Minerva, believe me when I insist, I am not a good man.” He said, but he could tell she was not going to buy it, and why did he want her to? Why did he want her to know that he wasn’t what he seemed, that Tom Riddle was a show he put on for the benefit of others? That was dangerous thinking, that type of thinking would throw him Azkaban all too easily and if not there out on the streets.

 

And yet he did want her to see, or at least to know him better than she seemed to, he wanted someone who knew him well. He missed Azrael, who had known him so well, and who had never flinched at the sight of him.

 

She looked so self-satisfied, almost smug, in her belief.

 

He couldn’t help but burst that bubble a little, “By the way, I like how you assumed it’d be a woman.”

 

She almost spit out her tea. She stared across at him in shock, blinking conclusion, as she traced his last sentence back to the original conversation.

 

Homosexuality, while more prevalent in the wizarding community than the muggle, was hardly accepted. It was alright to dally, but if you were the son of a lord you were expected to produce heirs for the good of the family line, and thus you could never take such affairs too seriously. Wives would turn blind eyes but in the end it was the family, the blood, and the politics that would prevail.

 

No one would openly admit to looking only at men.

 

“A… Tom, you aren’t serious are you?” She asked, flushing as she looked at him, he was really going for a record tonight. He wondered if it had crossed her thoughts, him in the course of an intimate affair with an unnamed man.

 

His eyebrows raised, “Am I, Minerva?” 

 

For a moment she considered it, after all it would explain a lot, why he had never looked twice at any girl in Hogwarts. Why he expressed no interest in dating anyone at all. Then she scrutinized his expression, caught the sardonic twinkle in his eyes, and rage won out over logical thinking as it usually did.

 

“Merlin, Tom, you have to stop doing that!”

 

Her conclusion was fair enough, at any rate, he had only ever looked at one person and it had never mattered to him that Azrael was a man. Had Azrael been a woman, as odd a thought as that was, his feelings would have been the same. Sexuality was only at the base of his affections.

 

It was his eyes that always caught Tom’s interest, those too green eyes, and those could belong to any gender.

 

“You enjoy it; I’m more entertaining than quidditch.”

 

Judging by the way her mouth hung open those words were more sacrilegious than claiming Merlin had been a fraud.

 

Many of their conversations went like that.

 

They got on well, they were less serious than he and Azrael, and in many ways he needed that. A distraction, something new, something different, something that stopped him from thinking of a wife he’d never met, of the last two conversations he’d had with Azrael, and the thought that this could truly be the end.

 

Only, according to Azrael, he was now endless so it could never truly be the end. Tom still had strange dreams at night, where he stepped out of time and wandered the warped fifth dimension, and sometimes he would catch Azrael’s face as he passed through.

 

Sometimes, late at night, he’d catch himself staring up at the sky searching for that small red planet. He’d always wonder, hands in his pocket, if Azrael was staring out at Earth as well. And every time he looked he couldn’t help but think of thousands upon thousands of unwritten letters that just waited to be sent.

 

But as always there were no words for the distant regret and cold sadness that he felt.

 

* * *

 

It was Minerva who eventually brought the two open positions in Hogwarts’ faculty to Tom’s attention. One was a new position, only recently created out of a desire to be politically correct rather than to teach children, a course called “Muggle Studies” as if all of humanity could somehow be taught in a single course. The course would focus on muggle technology, customs, and a brief look at their history and the very idea of it made Tom bristle.

 

They meant nothing by it, it was a progressive idea by a wizard’s standards. Minerva McGonagall was in full force behind it, citing the need to know and accept muggle culture, and it never seemed to occur to her that the course itself was more of an insult than not teaching a course at all.

 

The other was Tom’s old favorite subject, Defense Against the Dark Arts.

 

“They’re looking for young candidates, someone who will stay for a while, and Merlin knows you have experience in both.” Minerva said to him.

 

“Just because I am a mudblood does not mean I have expertise in all things muggle.” Tom had responded scathingly.

 

“Tom, language!” She’d said whacking him upside the head with a hand, and he wondered why she felt she could be this familiar with him, “I meant that you were always reading those muggle books in school and that you lived in Ubik; the fact that you grew up in muggle London only adds to it.”

 

“Fair enough, who’s applied so far?”

 

Minerva shrugged, as she wasn’t faculty herself she hadn’t been present for the interviews, but she claimed there’d been some fairly experienced candidates for the Dark Arts Position. Since the Muggle Studies position was new it was hard to say anyone had any background or expertise in the subject.

 

A professor, he’d never thought of himself as a teacher, he’d sometimes tutored struggling students who paid him a small fee but he’d never thought of pursuing a career in Hogwarts. A Defense professor, he liked the sound of it, away from the corruption of politics, tenured, and always near that castle that was more his home than anywhere in the world.

 

He could teach students to see beyond the garbage the ministry presented them, how to truly defend themselves and fight for what was important, what actually needed changing. He could show them that defending against the dark arts was more than spells, that it was in beliefs, in culture, and in the ability to present opportunity even to those who weren’t purebloods.

 

He could show them that Ubik wasn’t the issue, that Azrael could be trusted, and that it was themselves who would drive them to war and catastrophe. He may not be able to say it to Azrael’s face, may not be able to find the words, but in his own way he could make up for what he and Black had done there.

 

With that thought he applied for both positions, the Muggle Studies out of Minerva’s insistence more than anything else, and for the first time he felt some eagerness for the future.

 

As always, Tom should have realized that things were never that easy.

 

* * *

 

It was almost exactly like his application to the Ministry. He could see himself there so clearly, an eighteen year old graduate, so sure and insistent on the necessity of his position.

 

And here he was now, sitting before Armando Dippet’s desk, with his resume laid out on the desk and the words ‘unworthy mudblood’ written invisibly upon them. It was almost nostalgic.

 

“Tom, how good to see you, you’ve grown quite a bit since your graduation.” Dippet shook his hand eagerly, “A pity about that Ubik business, nasty stuff, still glad you and Orion Black made it out unscathed. We never should have trusted them in the first place, the centaurs are always telling us after all.”

 

(He wondered how much that joke had been floating around in his absence; he wondered if the centaurs were seething about it.)

 

“One should never go against the warnings of a centaur.” Tom agreed with a stretched smile, one he hadn’t worn in some time, he’d forgotten how hard it was to be polite.

 

Here Dippet’s expression had become resigned, “Now Tom, I noticed you’ve applied to both the open positions.”

 

“Yes, sir.” Tom said, and even as he said it and saw Dippet sigh it was as if he knew the exact words that were coming next.

 

“I’m afraid I can’t accept you for the Defense position, while you have experience in the work force, and in a dangerous area no less you simply don’t have that much experience in Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

 

Tom opened his mouth, about to point out his NEWT scores, his history in the dueling club, but Dippet cut him off, “I’m not talking about your experience in Hogwarts, which is certainly impressive, but you lack experience in the field. We’re looking to hire an ex-auror, someone pursuing their mastery, or someone with extraordinary qualifications.”

 

Extraordinary qualifications; oh he knew very well what those were.

 

Tom couldn’t help but think then, bitterly, as memories of his last interview flashed back if extraordinary qualities were those of pure blood. They would be lucky if an ex-auror decided to teach, it didn’t happen often, generally aurors were too worn down by the time they retired to be comfortable teaching tricks of the trade to children. As for mastery, most academics tended to gravitate towards Charms, Potions, Transfiguration, Alchemy, the less action heavy subjects. No, he doubted anyone from these categories had been applicants, Tom’s competition was some pureblood graduate who’d had decent scores in his NEWTs.

 

Tom had set national records with his scores; and they were going to hire some aristocratic brat who’d managed to scrape out an O.

 

“I see.” Tom said, and he felt magic boiling beneath his fingertips, barely contained by that charming façade he had practiced for so long.

 

“I’m truly sorry, Tom, but you simply don’t have the qualifications for that position.”  And he did appear sympathetic, sorry, as if this was a great loss. How was it that Armando Dippet became more, and not less, irritating now that he’d actually graduated from Hogwarts.

 

Perhaps he should just get up and leave, should just become a hermit in the mountains and forsake everyone and everything. Sometimes it seemed as if there wasn’t any point to these bureaucratic elitist obstacles placed in his path; why did he bother to struggle and fight when nothing was ever accomplished?

 

“Ah, but don’t despair, Tom.” Dippet said and then his sympathetic expression turning into a beaming smile, as if Tom had just made his day, “After reflection and looking at the other candidates you certainly are a fit for the Muggle Studies position.”

 

For a moment he couldn’t move, couldn’t force that smile, couldn’t move forward to shake the man’s hand with enthusiasm and say he was grateful for the opportunity. Because it was an insult, a true insult, that he didn’t have the experience for Defense but because he was a Mudblood who’d spent time on Mars he was more than a fit for Muggle Studies.

 

Muggle Studies, as if that even meant anything at all.

 

What the hell was a Muggle Studies? Was it physics, chemistry, philosophy, history, literature, sociology, biology, engineering? He’d asked multiple times and it seemed no one knew, only that it was muggle and it was important in this day and age. People needed to be culturally aware after all.

 

He closed his eyes for a moment, breathed, and willed himself to move forward and debase himself. He’d done it before for lesser things, he could do it again, and it would bring him back to Hogwarts like he’d never really left.

 

Tom Riddle, the Muggle Studies professor, dear god he couldn’t take himself seriously.

 

But nothing had changed, he could still do what he’d need to do, he could still teach and impart knowledge and change things even if he wasn’t the Defense professor.

 

He could still accomplish great things even as he taught all things muggle.

 

“Of course, sir, it’s a great honor.” He reached forward and took Dippet’s hand feeling something in him cracking.

 

A great honor, he was beginning to wonder how many great honors would line the wall of eternity.


	27. Chapter 27

September 1967.

 

“Welcome to Introductory Muggle Studies.” Tom began his lecture as he had for the past eighteen years, in a muggle suit, with a muggle map of the world behind him, in a room that lacked any of the flashing magic usually seen in wizarding decorations.

 

As always he took a moment to look at the newest crop of faces, his introductory students, three quarters of them would not return for the advanced OWL and NEWT courses. But for now they were looking at him with rapt attention, these flustered thirteen year old students, who seemed so much younger than he had ever felt in his life.

 

“I will start by warning you that if you assumed this class would be an easy O simply because you are muggle-born, or because it’s Muggle Studies, then you will undoubtedly fail my course. If you’re taking this class to receive an O in your OWL and NEWT examinations in the coming years then I regret to inform you that my course will not prepare you to pass those examinations either.” A few began to look worried, there were whispers in the back of the classroom, glances at each other as if to ask if they had just made some great mistake.

 

“However, if you are here to learn something, to broaden your horizons, or even to challenge yourself then you are in the correct classroom.” He offered a thin smile to the mass of students and then turned to the map behind him.

 

“This is the map of Earth, can anyone tell me where Britain is?”

 

There were a few chuckles, there always were, and in the front a boy confidently raised his hand with a little too smug of a smile on his face, as if this was all too easy.  Charlus Potter’s son, James Potter, one of the sources of Minerva’s near constant headaches if her complaints in the staff meetings were anything to go by.

 

(The trouble was that she secretly liked James Potter and his friends, she liked their stupid pranks and immaturity, she just could never let them know it or it’d be the end of her reputation. It was one of her great failings, that Minerva McGonagall couldn’t help but like stupid things like teenaged boys and quidditch.)

 

He looked like his father, had the same hair at the very least, and had similar enough features if you could look behind the glasses. There was a little of Dorea Black in him as well if one squinted but it seemed that the Potter genes ran dominant in the family.

 

“It’s those islands right there next to France.” James Potter said with a cheeky grin, but that had been the easy question.

 

“Very good, Mr. Potter, now how about wizarding Britain?” Tom asked and here the audience began to look a little confused. Even the muggleborn students always had trouble grasping this issue, that there was a difference between the political boundaries of the magical state versus the muggle, that they were not somehow one in the same thing.

 

“Anyone?” Tom asked, but no one answered, so he moved to answer it instead.

 

Pulling out a pen he circled London, a small section of Scotland, and various cities in Ireland, “As British wizards our ministry does not deign to separate our political borders from our muggle counterparts but if one were to look at our communities, to see where muggle ends and wizard begins, you would find that our nation is quite small. That we are a nation comprised of city states, small landlocked nations that have to pass through miles of muggle land before reaching its counterpart.”

 

It was always at this point, if there were any Slytherins who’d decided to take his class either as a joke or to keep an eye on him for their fathers, that the room would grow cold and they might even interrupt him saying that their father was on the board of trustees and he’d better remember his place.

 

The tension in the wizarding community had been growing though in the past decades, there were no Slytherins in his class now, and those that were purebloods were trying too hard to be politically correct to object here and now even if they didn’t agree.

 

There was a storm brewing, out there in wizarding Britain, and they were all just waiting for it to hit.

 

“Now, with apparition the idea of a connected country isn’t as integral as it is to the muggles. We don’t need roads or trains to get from Point A to Point B. Yet, never the less, in your own lives it’s clear that our state is derived from the infrastructure of its muggle counterpart. To get to school you take a train from King’s Cross in London, a muggle train station from a great muggle city. To enter the Ministry of Magic you use various phone booths in London’s financial district. The Leaky Cauldron acts as our border, letting you in and out from Diagon Alley, again located in central muggle London.” He placed his pen into his coat pocket once again, when he first started teaching he had gone further than this even, pointing out that the only truly magical state was Ubik which had refused to recognize the statute of secrecy since its creation. Instead allowing muggles to view magic as either an act of god or some alien technology, whatever they desired, and teaching its children in the magical school that had been built there. But Tom had learned that a bit of caution is always wise.

 

For now he would let those clever enough finish his lecture for him, realize that they lived in a muggle world, and that denying this was what lead to the horrific corruption that wracked the ministry today.

 

“Introductory Muggle Studies will be focused on the history of the muggle state and the magical state as well, where’s the difference, when were magical states founded, et cetera. The more advanced courses I teach are those that focus on muggle science and engineering, how muggle technology works. Any questions?”

 

* * *

 

The first time Tom Riddle really bothered to look at Lily Evans was when she was thirteen, a student in his introductory class attending his first office hours of the year.

 

As an elective teacher who wasn’t the head of a house he had little contact with younger students, he heard about them now and then in staff meetings or in the hallways, he’d learned to look out for Potter’s gang of idiots and had heard about a few here and there from various other professors but he didn’t really get to know a student unless they enrolled in his class. And only a certain type of student enrolled and remained in his courses.

 

So he’d heard of Lily Evans from Slughorn who gushed nauseatingly over her talent in Potions and Charms (so talented despite her background, wouldn’t you say Tom?), and from Minerva who served as her head of house but beyond that he’d never bothered to look for her.

 

She was standing there before he’d even opened his door, the front of the non-existent line, her bright red hair pulled loosely away from her face sporting her red and gold tie and looking rather put together for a thirteen year old girl.

 

“Professor Riddle.” She greeted when he opened the door, flushing slightly but speaking regardless of whatever embarrassment she felt, “You said these were your office hours on the syllabus.”

 

“Yes, Miss Evans, but normally students wait until the first assignment before they start knocking on my door.” He commented, they’d only had the one introductory course, which was really geared more towards highlighting what they would be talking about than anything in particular.

 

He motioned for her to come in, closing the door behind her, and sat down at his desk to look across at him. It was then, looking across at her, that he first realized that she had his eyes. Somehow she had Azrael’s eyes.

 

It had been almost twenty years since he’d seen that color, and as always he fell short of describing them, a green that was soft and dark, hard and clear all in the same moment. But they were his eyes; he knew that much without even having to look twice.

 

For a moment, a panicked terrifying moment, he wondered if they weren’t somehow related. If this girl, Lily Evans, wasn’t secretly from Ubik and the emperor’s daughter (because he’d once had a wife he could do it again). But they would never let her in, and Azrael would have told him, they hadn’t talked in many years but he would tell Tom if he would do this. If he had a daughter, if he sent her to Earth and England… Azrael would at least tell him that.

 

(So she couldn’t possibly be, he wouldn’t let her be, and he tried to slow his racing heartbeat.)

 

“Well, professor Riddle, I know we don’t have any assignment yet but I wanted to talk about class today. You know, I almost didn’t take this course, because I always thought it’d be on television or refrigerators. Potter and Black always went on about how it’d be on motorcycles and that’s why they were going to take it, but I talked to some of the older students and they said that it was actually a very difficult class.”

 

“The OWL and NEWT exams are on television, refrigerators, and motorcycles. Fortunately my course has nothing to do with the OWL and NEWT examinations.” Tom said dully, considering he was the first professor to teach the subject, you would have thought that the ministry would allow him to write the exams but of course they needed some bureaucrat to do it for him and entirely miss the point of the subject.

 

To the majority of wizards, particularly those in the bloated bureaucracy, a muggle was only as good as the muggle technology he kept in his house.

 

“Oh, I see.” She said with an expression that said she did not see or understand at all, “Well, what you said about wizarding Britain today was very interesting. I’ve never really thought of it that way…”

 

“Most don’t.” Tom said shortly, which was true, even after taking his course most just considered Tom an eccentric with opinions that were perhaps just a tad too radical.

 

For a moment they sat in silence, she took a moment to look around the office, her eyes falling on the maps and posters that lined the walls and the books that lined the shelves. He had his fair share of wizarding materials but many were muggle and more than a fair share were disguised texts from Ubik that were technically considered contraband for their origin. One day he’d have to take those back to his house, because wards could sometimes be thin things, but as it was no one had barged into his office yet.

 

“Professor Binns hasn’t ever said anything of the sort.” She commented, but she probably knew by  now that professor Binns hadn’t said anything of worth since he was alive. When Binns had died and arrived inside Hogwarts to teach his class Tom had been forced to come to the uncomfortable conclusion that he and Binns both had the opportunity to teach at Hogwarts forever since death itself couldn’t seem to stop them.

 

“Yes, well, that’s History of Magic, and this is Muggle Studies. They’re very different topics.”

 

She looked somewhat disappointed by his short response but didn’t push him on it, which was good, because that would very quickly descend into politics which was something that Tom avoided talking about at any given opportunity.

 

“Will we ever talk about Ubik?” It was as if she asked it suddenly, though it was not a sudden question, somehow the conversation had taken a turn for the surreal and he couldn’t help but find himself staring at her too closely.

 

What did she mean by that?

 

Surely she knew there were questions you didn’t ask, surely she had learned that by now. Every few years Tom was called back to the ministry, to be taken to a back room and asked about his experience on Ubik, those months where he had been ill, and just how was it that he looked so young at his age. So far he hadn’t refused, hadn’t been taken back further than a back room, but there was only so long that he could keep claiming the use of self-made and highly effective de-aging potions for his vanity before the Department of Mysteries got involved.

 

(There were some days where even he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that the face he wore was truly his face.)

 

Muggle relations with Ubik were different, they didn’t necessarily trust the country or its emperor, spied on it and made alliances with and against it but in the past years no strike had been made against the nation. People visited Ubik, returned from Ubik, academic papers were published an accepted and in recent years there had been talk of tourism even.

 

But in the Wizarding World you did not even dare to whisper its name.

 

“I am afraid, Miss Evans, that I am legally bound not to instruct on that particular topic.” Tom Riddle said shortly, coldly, perhaps a little too much because her eyes, those eyes, widened slightly and she looked as if he had just shouted.

 

He’d gained a reputation as not only one of Hogwarts more eccentric professors but also as the most terrifying and intimidating; which was more than a grand feat considering he was the Muggle Studies professor.

 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” She said hastily but it was clear again that she didn’t understand, that she didn’t understand why saying things like that were dangerous, particularly for someone like him.

 

“It’s fine, it’s nothing to worry about.” Not for someone her age, although the country was always leery of muggleborns, because the parents could decide to send their children to Ubik for magical education if Britain was not quite compelling enough.

 

They had a panic, a few years back, when a prospective muggleborn student had taken a look at all Wizarding Britain had to offer and had politely declined his admission to Hogwarts, stating that he would attend Ubik’s magical school instead. Since then Hogwart’s recruitment pitch had become a little more forceful.

 

She said nothing for a few moments, perhaps that was all she had wanted to discuss, and again he caught himself staring at her. Azrael had dark hair that was curlier, more like a Potter than anyone else but his face and his eyes, this girl had them. If Tom switched around only a few features, put in a thinner nose, drained more of the color from her face, made her hair black instead then the similarities were almost eerie.

 

And she had asked him about Ubik…

 

Lily Evans would end up being one of his best students, as Minerva McGonagall had promised she would be. She was bright, intuitive, and always curious asking why this or why that nearly monopolizing his office hours. The only other student to rival her was the dark horse Arthur Weasley who had a knack and fascination for engineering and anything muggle and was competing with Evans for most time spent in his office, always asking about how a particular muggle device worked and how he might build one himself.

 

He tried not to think about Lily Evans too closely, though she made it increasingly difficult when he assigned essays and she just had to drill him in depth on this and that and every topic between them. There were days when it was almost nostalgic to see her, because in seeing her he caught a glimpse of him, but there were other days where he was reminded too much of things he had already tried to let go.

 

He heard of Azrael, distantly, there were muggle films and scores of literature about him. There was something so fascinating about an immortal god-like emperor that the muggle world couldn’t seem to contain it. The actors were always a little wrong though, many too old, some too young, never capturing that otherworldly mix that was inherent in him.

 

In pictures from newspapers, from magazines, and from journals he was never any younger. Somehow he and Tom had both managed to look the same from that time, as if none of it had ever happened.

 

Many times that year, as he’d done those first few years back in England, he took a blank piece of parchment and wrote the name Azrael on the top. He stared at it, his pen dripping ink onto the surface as if to speak for him, and once again he tried to summarize what he couldn’t seem to say.

 

“Goddammit!”

 

And he’d throw the parchment away, as he did every single time, and think that maybe the next letter would be the one that he’d actually manage to send.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, an explanation on the dates. This is one of those moments of me not doing research/looking things up and so assuming James/Lily/Marauders were much older than they actually were. So, yes, it's just something we'll have to roll with as I am not rewriting all the references to the dates. Sorry about that folks.


	28. Chapter 28

February 1970.

 

“And so I said, James, you’re a complete idiot and the biggest asshole I’ve ever seen and if you think being terrible to Severus makes you look cool then I...”

 

There were times when Tom couldn’t help but be reminded of the fact that he was now intrinsically different than the majority of humanity. For the most part he kept it out of his thoughts, acknowledged his immortality, but essentially moved past it.

 

(Ironic, since he had obsessed on it so very much when he was younger, but by all accounts he was a very different person back then.)

 

Azrael had been right, all those years ago, eternity was something you whittled at when the mood suited you. Attempt to swallow it whole and you would be driven mad.

 

There were classes to teach, staff meetings to endure, quidditch games to attend, things to research, learn, whole worlds of opportunity that didn’t leave him time to philosophize and think about what had happened in Mars. He would leave pointless philosophizing to the god emperor of Ubik.

 

But there were times when he couldn’t help but acknowledge that he was no longer the same Tom Riddle that had graduated Hogwarts all those years ago. Then, he had only barely grasped what Azrael meant when he spoke about magic and the nature of reality. Now, now he could see it.

 

He could see the gentle golden flow of time as it flowed through the universe, a slow and unending river that coursed and pulsed like the blood in his veins. It would catch on people, move through or around them, create patterns and currents around them, to keep moving and flowing.

 

Each person made a distinct shape in time, some were more distinctive than others. Dumbledore’s was chaotic, stormy, everything disrupted around him until direction was hard to see. Minerva’s moved in a single decided direction, speeding the current along its path. Potter’s was distinctive, as was Black’s, Snape’s, Malfoy’s, and so many others.

 

Only Azrael was removed from this, Tom had never seen it move around him, for the emperor of Ubik time ceased to exist as a dimension. He walked beyond it, not through it, existing on a plane beyond time and space where Tom had wandered that day on Mars.

 

But no one had a pattern quite like Lily Evans.

 

Staring across at her, as she chattered on about her latest aggravation against James Potter in his office hours, he couldn’t help but once again notice the way time moved around her. It was a single clear ripple, as if someone had thrown a single stone into the still pond of reality, or someone had run a single tiny bell and listened for the echo.

 

Not the complete absence like Azrael’s, but something serene, calm, and untouched all the same. As if she was on the edge of something greater. But it was hard to reconcile this image with the chattering girl in front of him.

 

“Miss Evans…” He said, interrupting her, he’d been hoping the name ‘Miss Evans’ would get her attention as she’d insisted after two years that if he could call Arthur Weasley by his first name then he could do the same for her.

 

She hadn’t always been this forward with him, not in her introductory class. But Tom’s advanced courses, his OWL and NEWT courses, were very tight-knit things with only a few students in each so that all the students felt more comfortable with him than they had in the beginning. If you could make it past that first year, and then past the second, then you would be one of two or three remaining students and could work on or study whatever you wanted to for the most part. Sometimes this meant helping Arthur Weasley with engineering and cryptography, Lily with history, politics, or whatever she wanted to talk about at that moment on that day. And sometimes it meant Lily coming into his office hours forgetting that Tom wasn’t even close to her age and that they weren’t peers thinking he cared what devilry that bastard James Potter had gotten up to this week.

 

If he could go back in time and castrate Charlus Potter the world would be a much better place, if only because he wouldn’t have to listen to this, multiple times a week.

 

Staff meetings, office hours, from Minerva… And the sad part of it was that he thought everyone secretly liked James Potter and his rag-tag group of hooligans, they were a nuisance, but in that charming Gryffindor charismatic way that made everything worth only a day or so of detention at the worst.

 

Personally, Tom was getting pretty goddamned tired of it.

 

“And then, do you know what he said?! He said…”

 

“Miss Evans.” He interrupted, a little more forcefully, causing her to stop her hand gestures and finally stop talking, looking sheepish.

 

“If I’m mistaken you’ll have to forgive me, I’ve stopped paying any attention to Horace Slughorn at staff meetings, but I believe there’s a Slug Club meeting tonight.” As if to confirm this Lily’s face became flushed and she looked even more sheepish than before.

 

He sighed, looking at the clock on the wall, and noted drily, “And I believe that you are an hour late.”

 

“Well, I…” She started and then something sparked in her eyes, “You know that’s really none of your business, professor Riddle.”

 

No, it wasn’t, but this was also becoming ridiculous.

 

He put up with a lot of things at Hogwarts, had since the very beginning of his tenure. His reputation was mixed. On the one hand, he’d never really lost that aura of killing intent. With a single look he could strike terror into the depths of a student’s soul without even having to say a word.  On the other hand he was the Muggle Studies’ professor, a known eccentric who was challenging Albus Dumbledore for the title of most ridiculous yet powerful wizard in the school, and wore muggle suits, so no one could take him too seriously. And then there was his other reputation…

 

His reputation with school girls hadn’t changed much since his Hogwarts days, and somehow his fearsome reputation had also managed to draw even more of their attention than before, as if being slightly dangerous and eccentric made him somehow appealing. He’d already received more chocolates than any thin man could possibly consume for Valentine’s Day, his eternally youthful facial features probably did nothing to deter them, and every time it came up he just felt so much more uncomfortable about everything.

 

Being pretty could be convenient but at the same time… Why was he so pretty?

 

Then he really looked at her, and realized that her embarrassment had faded and something darker and deeper had taken its place. She was staring at her hands, and her eyes were distant, and in them he saw so many of his younger memories with Azrael.

 

(He always tried not to think about that.)

 

“You said that you’re muggleborn, professor?’ She asked, looking up from her hands to forward at him and he couldn’t help but nod slowly.

 

She grimaced slightly and then said, “Severus and I have been friends for a long time, before I even knew what being muggleborn meant, long before Hogwarts… I thought it didn’t matter that I was in Gryffindor and he was in Slytherin, that his mother was a witch and no one in my family even knew what magic was… I was wrong.”

 

She waited a moment, not explaining, before declaring in a calm voice, “I’m not going to the Slug Club today because I realized something this morning. I realized that I don’t belong there, that my being muggle born and being in the Slug Club isn’t proving some point, I’m not proving anyone wrong I’m just…”

 

She fell silent and resumed staring at her hands, as if they held the answers to her problems. Tom sighed, leaning back in his chairs, he should convince her to go. It’d be in her best interest if she really did want to get anywhere in magical Britain. If she wanted a good Ministry job, one beyond paper pushing, one that she didn’t have to carve out for herself, then Slughorn was her best bet if not her only chance. It would also, conveniently, get her the hell out of his office and force her to deal with whatever social issues she was having without him being involved.

 

But he had made that same decision she was making now, had been forced to deal with the consequences as far as employment were concerned, and he still did not regret it.

 

He let out a long sigh, knowing that he just couldn’t resist even when there were so many reasons he should avoid this conversation, “When I was a student I only attended one Slug Club.”

 

Lily looked up, her eyebrows raising, “Professor Slughorn taught Potions…” her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to figure out how old exactly Tom was. He was pretty sure he told everyone, he announced it every year on his birthday for those who stayed over the holidays, just in case anyone forgot (because so many forgot).

 

“Yes, he taught Potions and was still head of Slytherin when I was a student.” Tom said as non-chalantly as he could, this wasn’t the point of what he was trying to say, “The party was terrible. Flashy, elegant, wealthy, elitist, everything that I wasn’t but tried to convince myself I wanted to be. Right away I knew I wasn’t enjoying myself, however I was putting up with it, until I had a conversation with James Potter’s father Charlus.”

 

Judging from the look on Lily’s face she was jumping to the not entirely incorrect assumption that Charlus was an asshole. Charlus Potter had been a bit of an asshole, but he was much more subtle about it, and for being the heir to one of the great pure blood lines he hadn’t been bad at all. No, Lily was equating Charlus with James, and James was far worse than Charlus and Dorea had ever been.

 

No, if anyone reminded them of their father, in an odd ironic way it was Sirius Black. In spite of being in Gryffindor, his rumored family troubles, Sirius reminded Tom almost exactly of a young Orion Black.

 

“Charlus was quite polite and to anyone else it might have been an enjoyable conversation but he made a glaring faux pas…” Tom paused, he couldn’t remember the last time he had brought up Azrael with anyone. To others he had died years ago, barely remembered, that weird Hufflepuff that Tom Riddle had been friends with. He decided to move on, “The Slug Club will get you higher into the Ministry or any other field than you likely could get on your own. If you want to pursue a career in politics, in any state run department, then its best you continue to attend.”

 

However, he left unsaid, perhaps your reluctance here shows that you don’t want that kind of life.

 

“So it’s okay then, if I don’t go.” Lily said, parsing his words.

 

“It depends on what you want.” If Lily wanted to be minister of magic then it would be best if she make a few vital connections through Slughorn and start buttering up the light purebloods. If she wanted to work as a curse breaker for Gringotts then she just needed to be very good at arithmancy and runes.

 

She looked a little put out by that, probably wanted a more definitive response, but it was better to give the truth rather than simply tell her what she wanted to hear. The silence elongated from meaningful into awkward but Tom had no intention of breaking it.

 

At least she’d stopped chattering about James Potter.

 

“Is that all?” Tom finally asked when she continued to sit there.

 

“No, yes, I mean that’s it.”

 

“Then leave.”

 

Flushing she got to her seat and quickly walked out, closing the door softly behind her, finally giving Tom the time to finish grading horrendous essays written by thirteen year olds.

 

* * *

 

“To be or not to be, that is the question, whether tis nobler… Tis nobler… Merlin’s balls…”

 

Tom’s rivalry with Albus Dumbledore for the most eccentric professor in the school was deep, intense, and had been going on for quite some time by May of 1970.

 

Tom had no idea which of them had started it or when either of them had become aware that there was in fact a rivalry. Perhaps they had been drifting in their own separate directions of eccentricity for some time and then when they noticed the other they spurred each other on to greater heights of madness.

 

Albus Dumbledore wore bright clashing colors and horrifically eye catching patterns; these moved from polka dots to cats waltzing in time with cacti. Anything and everything could be littered across the man’s clothing and if you dared to point it out to him he’d act as if he had no idea what you were talking about.

 

Tom’s clothing wasn’t quite as jarring but in a way wearing muggle suits as a professor was just as likely to label him as a madman as Dumbledore’s outfits.

 

However, Tom was winning, if only because it was a competition and he must win at something in his never ending lifetime. And the reason was not because of his past in Ubik, his muggle clothing, his borderline radical philosophy, but was instead because of the yearly tradition of the Shakespeare play.

 

James Potter spluttered on stage, looking hopelessly out at his audience, before giving them a cheery grin and slight wave. The audience laughed, and as happened every year, the point of Hamlet was completely lost upon the audience.

 

Then again, this year he’d had a bit of miscasting.

 

It had started a few years into his teaching career when he got tired of watching students write lines in his detention. He’d decided, on a whim more than anything, that if they were going to waste his time they might as well entertain him while they were at it. And so every year, Tom put together a Shakespeare production, with his most frequent detention students in starring roles.

 

It was always terrible, sometimes embarrassed the students horribly, but all the same it was more than a little entertaining and at this point was just as much a hallmark of Hogwarts as Slughorn’s Slug Club. Each May, at the end of classes but before finals, they’d transform the great hall into a stage and watch as the poorly prepared actors took on the greatest of Shakespeare’s works.

 

1970’s production though, as he watched beside Minerva (as she guffawed at James Potter’s soliloquy), he couldn’t help but feel the show had taken a darker turn. He had miscast, because he had assumed casting would not matter.

 

Sirius Black should have been Hamlet. He did not know who would play Laertes, Claudius, Ophelia but Sirius Black should have been Hamlet…

 

“So basically I shouldn’t kill myself because then I’ll be dead but it’d be really nice to be dead because I’m kind of tired.” James Potter said, at the very least catching the drift of the lines, “Yeah, so, that’s it.”

 

Sirius Black, though he would deny it vehemently, was his father’s son. He had simply moved in a different direction and as conflict had increased had eventually been disinherited from the family leaving his younger brother Regelus as the next head of the house of Black.

 

Everyone knew this, no one attempted to hide it, but there were other things they attempted to hide. It was by chance that even Tom had found out, or perhaps not so much by chance as by… As by those aspects about himself that he didn’t always acknowledge.

 

Sirius Black was dangerous, more dangerous than his father at that age, and one of these days he was going to get someone killed. He’d already tried.

 

Tom had been patrolling the corridors that night when he’d seen it, a flicker of gold, time stilling slightly. Time had ebbed and then like a current directed itself out the window onto the grounds, and when he’d seen it, he’d looked down to see three forms scurrying in the dark towards the castle.

 

He’d known that this was somehow important, that this moment was crucial, but he couldn’t explain why he could only watch as it glowed.

 

On stage now Ophelia, a young Ravenclaw who’d thought she could get away with sleeping in his class or else studying for Transfiguration under her desk, was now in despair and on the brink of suicide after Hamlet’s careless treatment of her.

 

Next to him, Minerva commented, “You know, I think this is almost better than the last Hamlet show you put on.”

 

But Tom wasn’t listening, he was still thinking back, thinking back to when he’d cornered Severus Snape. Tom had never spoken with him directly, knew of him, but Severus Snape had stayed very far away from Muggle studies.

 

His mother, Eileen Prince, had always been a clever girl but she had married a muggle, and judging by Severus Snape’s ragged clothing and wary look his father had not been a great man. Severus Snape was dirt poor, insecure, but also ruthlessly intelligent and proud. He was in Slytherin, and like Tom had, he sought to prove himself to be just as Slytherin as Lucius Malfoy, even with his halfblood pedigree.

 

Until earlier in the Spring he had been best friends with Lily Evans.

 

That night he was pale and shaking, his eyes flat, attempting to be angry but finding no fuel in his hopelessness. He’d been silent, standing still, and on the brink of self-destruction.

 

Tom had dragged the boy to his office.

 

“I’ve already spoken with the headmaster.” He’d said, when he’d been forced to take a seat, and judging by his expression this was all he expected he’d have to say. And in normal circumstances it was, Tom wasn’t his head of house, barely even knew him and yet…

 

And yet he had one of those feelings, one of those out of time feelings that was a bad idea to ignore, to cast aside that he should not ignore this.

 

“I understand that.” He’d said instead, causing the Slytherin to give him a somewhat irritated frown.

 

“Then what do you want?” There was little enough respect for his betters in there, not that there ever had been respect in Slytherin for the Muggle Studies professor, but all the same there was more venom there than he would have expected.

 

It was no secret that Severus Snape was being bullied to the point of abuse by Potter and his friends, most turned a blind eye but… This year had been worse than the other years and it seemed as if this night had been the breaking point.

 

For Sirius Black, for James Potter, for Remus Lupin and for Severus Snape.

 

The story went something like this.

 

Sirius Black took a very bad joke a little too far, to the point where it started looking as if it wasn’t a joke anymore, like he really meant something by it. Sirius Black lured Severus Snape into the woods on the night of a full moon, where Remus Lupin, a student suffering from lycranthopy was running rabid through the trees. James Potter caught on somehow, and before the worst could occur, reached Sirius and Severus and somehow getting them out.

 

Albus Dumbledore, in his office, was forced to make a decision.

 

Did he alienate the only recently disowned heir to the house of Black, a proclaimed light wizard, friend of Potter’s heir, and expel Remus Lupin for something beyond his control or did he keep it quiet and tell the poor, halfblood, son of Eileen Prince that sometimes it is best to keep one’s mouth shut?

 

The choice was easy, when you looked at it from the political perspective.

 

Now, only a few weeks later, Severus Snape was still teetering dangerously over that abyss. That night Tom would honestly not have been surprised if the boy had tried to kill himself.

 

So Tom had offered him a way out, a way to give him time, “Aurors are proficient to a point in Potions.”

 

It was the first thing he’d said that night, after he’d compelled the story out of Severus Snape, using half-forgotten techniques from the orphanage. Oh and the boy had hated it, probably hadn’t realized that someone could do that, could merely compel him to tell the truth from will alone.

 

“They brew their own, they can recognize one if they find it, but only to a point. They’re far from being Potions masters and sometimes they’ll need something that’s beyond their capability of brewing.”

 

“What are you saying?” He’d asked, but they both knew exactly what Tom was suggesting.

 

Because if Tom had been in that position, in that very same position, he would have done exactly what he told Severus Snape to do.

 

“Sirius Black will never go to Azkaban for what he did. He is a Black, a disowned Black, but still a Black, his best friend will one day be Lord Potter, and you will never have any political weight. If you want revenge then you will need to live, you will need to study, and you will need to become a Potions Master. Because one day Sirius Black will need a potion he can’t refuse and you must be in a position to give it to him.”

 

Now though, as he watched his play unfold, he wondered if he had only delayed things for a while. He had prevented recklessness on Severus Snape’s part, had prevented him from slitting Black’s throat in his sleep, or else killing himself in despair but what had he turned him towards.

 

The world could only handle so many Tom Riddles…


	29. Chapter 29

“Come on, Azrael, you can’t deny all of divination.”

 

A half-forgotten Martian summer night, the air less frigid, the flowers blooming and twinkling like fallen stars caught in the tall grass. Azrael had been tinkering with some contraption, not paying Tom or the wine between them any mind, while Tom tried to pester him for attention being the bored and under stimulated diplomat that he was.

 

The magical school had yet to be built, Tom had yet to accidentally become immortal, and it seemed as if he might stay on that red planet forever.

 

Azrael spared him a glance, a raised eyebrow, and nothing more than that.

 

“I realize you have no respect for the subject but even you have to admit that there are prophecies that have come true.” The eyebrows raised higher and Tom was rewarded with Azrael setting aside his work to look him straight in the eye.

 

“Do you really want to have this conversation?” He asked.

 

“Yes, I think it’s a perfectly fine topic for conversation. I actually find it a little odd that you’re so uncomfortable with it.” But then Tom always found a lot of things odd about Azrael, this wouldn’t be the first and wouldn’t be the last either.

 

“I’m deathly allergic to prophecies.” Azrael quipped with a rather typical non-explanation, you could always count on Azrael to be needlessly and infuriatingly cryptic. 

 

“But you don’t deny that they do exist.” Tom pointed out.

 

“Prophecies are… complicated. They’re snapshots of the universe, of time, convoluted by translation into human language. They do tend to be true, but only if the universe isn’t altered between one frame and the next… My mere existence has thwarted thousands of prophecies.” Azrael said with a sigh before continuing, “But I really don’t like the idea of inevitability, not only that, I don’t really believe in it either.”

 

Azrael motioned loosely over to Tom, “Just look at you, nothing about your life has been inevitable. You’ve chosen everything for yourself and wandered so far from what anyone would have prophesized you to be, even yourself.”

 

“Is that a good thing?”

 

And Azrael had smiled, a true almost human smile, one that made his eyes spark in the moonlight, that strange ephemeral green that one only saw in spell light, “It’s the best thing there is.”

 

Perhaps, Azrael was right about inevitability, perhaps nothing was inevitable, perhaps prophecies were only crude glimpses of what was most likely to be. To some extent Tom would come to agree with that, because very few things in his life seemed fixed, or seemed necessary to come true.

 

Tom never would have seen himself as a Muggle Studies professor and he was fairly certain that no one would have seen himself as that either.

 

But there was a darker, deeper, side to inevitability. It was something that could not be avoided, which was led up to by seemingly irrelevant and inconsequential events, which perhaps could not have been predicted but by that point would have been worthless to predict either.

 

Tom had once taken the hand of a very foreign Hufflepuff, released and killed a basilisk, lived and been banished from Mars, and somehow all of these events had led to him having no choice but to accept the Muggle Studies position. That was inevitability, in its strange warped form.

 

And there was yet another string of seemingly meaningless events.

 

Lily Evans became his student, he noticed she had Azrael’s eyes, every shade of green that had existed in his were somehow in hers. Arthur Weasley enthusiastically and stubbornly wormed his way into becoming Tom’s only apprentice after his graduation. Sirius Black and James Potter both graduated to become successful aurors. Severus Snape apprenticed himself to an apothecary and waited, biding his time, and waiting for the moment to strike. Lily Evans decided, on her graduation, to become Slughorn’s apprentice and stay in the castle.

 

And once, many years before, Azrael had created a device which he had cryptically labeled as insurance and never explained further.

 

These events, should have had little to no impact on his life, perhaps Arthur alone as his apprentice would be memorable. The others were simply passing through, going from one part of their lives to the next, while he abided as he now always would.

 

But they didn’t remain irrelevant, they built, invisibly upon one another until something inevitable happened because of it.

 

This was the story of how Tom Marvolo Riddle destroyed the universe without choice, without reason, and without the slightest idea he was capable of such a thing.

 

* * *

 

“Congratulations, Arthur, you get to teach your first class.”  Tom said, not really bothering to pay attention to Arthur but instead flicking through his muggle bought books and making sure there was nothing too incriminating among them.

 

There were a few science fiction novels which, when the ministry’s department of magical printing security had finally gotten around to reading, had been declared contraband. As such whenever he bought anything, or whenever that list was updated, Tom had to make sure that only the right sort of books were on display. After all, at the mercy of his own ministry record, Tom’s office and apartment were one of the first places they always started looking.

 

If Arthur was offended by this lack of attention then Tom didn’t really care, because Arthur should have gotten over it by the time he was fourteen, and if he was going to wear outdated muggle clothing like top hats then he’d better get used to no one taking him seriously.

 

“Not the… Not the introductory class, right? I mean, I didn’t mind it but building motors, engines, and motorcycles was a lot more interesting.”

 

Tom spared him a dry, unimpressed, look complete with raised eyebrows all while he surreptitiously removed Animal Farm from the shelf. Although, what was so offensive about Animal Farm he wasn’t sure, maybe the ministry thought it was talking about them, since no one in the ministry seemed to know what a communist even was. It just went to show that while the ministry tried to be oppressive they were just so incompetent that it ended up more obnoxious than it was unsettling.

 

Arthur just smiled uncertainly back, his eyes begging for Tom to say something else.

 

“I don’t make the rules, Arthur, I just nod my head and go along with them.” Tom replied, and turned his attention back to the shelf. The rest seemed… fine enough. Although, now that he thought about it, since he had to do this every year they were probably basing the list off of his collection. So chances were everything else on the shelf would have to be relocated at some point.

 

Behind him he heard a groan of despair, “Who made those rules?”

 

“Whoever made all the other time honored traditions that Hogwarts abides by. Blame whoever came up with the sorting hat, that’s what I do.” Tom said, because he really couldn’t believe that Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin all got around a table and thought it would be a great idea to make a singing hat sort people into their own personal clubs. Surely, they must have had more dignity than that.

 

“But I like the sorting hat…” Before Arthur could finish that damning and ignorant sentence, because no one in their right mind could like the sorting hat, Tom continued.

 

“An apprentice starts first by teaching introductory classes, then in a year we can add higher level electives on whatever subject you want, all while you do your own independent research and help me with my own. That’s simply how it goes.” And honestly not worth arguing about, although as much as Tom hated Dumbledore the man probably wouldn’t have any complaints, it’d be the board of directors (who already were guffawing over a Muggle Studies apprentice) who’d have none of it.

 

“But I… I don’t remember any muggle history!” Arthur cried, his despair almost comical with the top hat, “Alright, if I have to teach the basic course… let me change something! You don’t have to teach history then, right?”

 

“No, but it makes more sense to.” It was, after all, an introductory course.

 

The way it had been described to Tom, in his initial interview with Dippet, was a course that introduced wizards to the muggle world in its entirety. Tom took this to mean a very broad course on what wizards defined as muggle culture, so this meant where muggles had separated from wizards, how muggles governed themselves, cultural things. Later they could nitpick about physics and engineering.

 

“Alright then, I’ll change it and I’ll…”

 

Tom cut him off again, this time with a glare, “Just teach the goddamned history, Arthur.”

 

Arthur paled then wilted, apparently possessing enough self-preservation to be terrified of Tom, or at least when it didn’t concern getting an apprenticeship (because Tom had tried decently hard to dissuade him).

 

“You didn’t think it would all be skittles and beer, did you?” Tom asked.

 

“I don’t even understand what that means.” Arthur said, his face almost as red as his hair from the embarrassment, and without sympathy Tom pulled out some of the larger history textbooks he kept in his office and dumped them into Arthur’s hands.

 

“Read your notes, read these, watch documentaries, and then teach the bloody course.” Tom said ending with a chillingly polite smile, one which exudes pleasantness as well as lethal disregard in the same moment.

 

“Right, will do… Tom?” Arthur looked at him frantically, “Do I… Do I call you Tom?”

 

There was a moment of silence before Arthur pressed bravely onwards, ever the Gryffindor, “No, really I… I mean, I can’t exactly call you Professor Riddle now, can I? It would be weird… Not that calling you Tom isn’t weird but… It is your name, so I call you Tom, right? Right?”

 

Tom didn’t answer him, merely kept smiling, which Arthur seemed to take as a hint to wander off with a dazed and alarmed expression as he took in the fact that he was going to have to sound like an authority figure to thirteen year olds and actually understand centuries worth of European history.

 

Which was good because it left Tom in peace to decide if a Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle was too damning to leave in the work place, despite being written long before Azrael had become emperor of Ubik. All the same there was something about the unfathomable horror that was Azathoth that some bureaucrat at the ministry wouldn’t like.

 

Or it would have, if there hadn’t been a tentative knock on the door and then Lily Evans stepping in. “Hi profess… Tom, Merlin it seems I was here just yesterday as a student.”

 

He honestly hadn’t expected her to stick around, he hadn’t known what she would do instead, but the idea of Lily Evans somehow staying in Hogwarts had been bizarre. But there she was, Horace Slughorn’s apprentice, walking in through his doorway as a coworker instead of as a student.

 

“A few months ago.” Which to Tom almost seemed like yesterday, time moved so fast and so slow when you had so much of it, it seemed like yesterday that Lily Evans was thirteen years old. Some of that girl still lingered in her, the smile, her eyes, that overeager willingness to learn that was somehow endearing rather than obnoxious.

 

“Right, I’m really not that old after all.” She said, flushing slightly, and then said, “I saw Arthur just walk out, he looked a little busy.”

 

“He’s teaching a course in the fall and he has a lot of work to do.” Tom said shortly, forcing his attention back to the books, and with a sigh deciding that he wasn’t going to chance Lovecraft after all.

 

He needed nice, safe, bland, but somehow entertaining books for his office. He’d have to make an effort to find some, if only so he didn’t have to keep hiding is literature all the damn time. It wasn’t as if the government was serious about all of this yet, but still, it was always better for Tom to err on the side of caution.

 

“Oh, I am too, Professor Slug… I mean, Horace, is having me teach first year Potions next year. I hope it goes well, I think it will but, well I’ve tutored people before but…”

 

“You’ll do fine.” Tom cut her off before she could mutter out whatever other unfounded insecurities she had about herself, “You always do.”

 

Lily Evans really had been one of the most promising students to come out of Hogwarts in decades, often overshadowed by her male counterparts, but from what he’d seen and heard he might even say that she was one of the best since he himself had gone to Hogwarts.

 

“I… Thanks, Tom.” And then she smiled, and for a moment he wasn’t staring at her at all, but instead Azrael many years ago smiling back at him.

 

Only, he was also still seeing her, seeing the red in her hair and the almost unnoticeable freckles across her nose, and looking at her and the way the light brought out her eyes he felt his heart stutter.

 

(And all he could think then, as he looked at her, was oh god no.) 

 

He quickly tried to shake off the feeling and move on to something else, “Did you need something?”

 

“No, not really, I just wanted to see you and Arthur and ask how things were going.”

 

Well, Minerva did that, but no one else really did. And when Minerva dropped by it was usually to harass him into attending a quidditch game or chaperoning the Hogsmede trip. No one ever stopped by his office to just… stop by.

 

“…It’s going well.” He said, and judging by her expression she found that answer just as awkward as he did.

 

“Oh, good. I um…”

 

“You know, you can call Riddle, if it makes you more comfortable.” Tom suddenly blurted, because really, he’d never had this issue growing up. No one had called him Tom, well Azrael had, and later Minerva, but he’d always been Riddle.

 

“What, I no, I mean Tom is your…”

 

“I really don’t have a preference, if Tom is too casual…”

 

“No! No, it’s not too…too casual, I mean, I think I should call you Tom.” She finished, smiling again uncertainly, but with genuine feeling behind it instead of simply awkwardness of a conversation that had long since gone off the rails.

 

(And he’d seen that expression before, he’d seen that and catalogued it, and how could she look so much like him…)

 

“Well, anyways, glad I stopped by and… And we should do something sometime, I mean, now that we’re coworkers. So, yeah, see you later then.”

 

And before he could make a word of protest she was out the door, and he was sitting there, dumbfounded with his books feeling like something had just whacked him over the head.

 

He’d get used to the feeling.

 

* * *

 

Alone, at night, when he’d finally run out of other things to distract himself with, pacing in his bedroom the irony did not escape him that Tom was saying to himself all the things that Azrael had so carelessly said to him.

 

He was too old, she was too young, he had too much baggage, too many things she would never be able to comprehend and shouldn’t bother trying too.

 

Rehearsing them so that he could say them to the hypothetical Lily Evans who probably wasn’t even interested, or if she was, it was a superficial shallow interest at best.

 

Because when she looked at him she saw someone only a little older than her, a man in his mid-twenties, she didn’t see someone fast approaching sixty.  And even then, even if she comprehended his real age, she didn’t know him and she never would.

 

She would never learn about the basilisk lying dead in the Chamber of Secrets, she’d never learn about Azrael and what he’d been before he was an emperor, she’d never hear about everything he was and everything he wasn’t. So anything that there was must be superficial, there wasn’t room for anything else.

 

The fact that he felt the need to rehearse this rejection speech was ridiculous because there wasn’t anything to reject.

 

He wasn’t even really attracted to her, he just… He was reminded of phantoms, he looked at her and saw everything he couldn’t have, and hadn’t been brave enough to confront for years out of fear of rejection. The fear which, ultimately, had been completely justified.

 

So it wasn’t…

 

(But as the year went on, as she’d show up out of nowhere, dragging him to see the latest muggle film or telling him about the book he had to read, her eyes dancing, seeming all too interested, it’d grow a little worse.

 

He liked her, not just because she reminded him of Azrael, but because of her. She glowed with optimism, with determination, with righteousness, and when she looked at him he saw something much different than a failed Muggle Studies professor reflected in her eyes.

 

It’d grow a little worse and there wasn’t anything he seemed to be able to do to stop it.)

 

* * *

 

“Can you believe that I have to go to Slug Club meetings?”

 

He didn’t find any of these walks around the lake or through Hogsmede with Lily Evans unpleasant. He’d watch her face for her smile, for her eyes to spark, and for a moment it would be like everything fell away.

 

(And then he’d be momentarily horrified at himself.)

 

Even when it was winter, the snow was piled high, the lake was frozen and any sensible human being would have been huddling around a fireplace, he still didn’t mind being out here with her and listen to her vent about working for Slughorn.

 

He felt this was a bad sign.

 

“You decided to become Horace Slughorn’s apprentice, what did you expect?” Because really, there were reasons Tom went out of his way to avoid his old head of house. Not that Slughorn really went out of his way to see Tom anymore. Despite being a professor Tom had failed to live up to Slughorn’s expectations as youngest mudblood minister of magic and he was probably still slighted by the fact that Tom had stopped going to those stupid parties. Which, if that meant he didn’t have to talk to Slughorn, he would be happy if the man remained insulted forever. 

 

“I haven’t been to a Slug Club meeting since… I don’t know when, my fifth year!” She placed her head into her hands, groaning, “And I can’t exactly say no this time because he’s basically the one paying my salary.”

 

“If it makes you feel better Arthur Weasley now has to fill in the extra parts for the annual detention Shakespeare festival.” It was one of the years where they did a play actually needing a larger cast, and as a result, Arthur was desperately trying to find some brat who was a bit too obnoxious in class or else face utter humiliation in the role of Puck. Some might say, that sort of hell, was worth seven years of suffering through Slug Club parties.

 

“I honestly rather would do that… I mean, I know I’m not that much older but… I’ve graduated, I’m working, I should be researching or preparing classes not drinking champagne with… With Sirius’ little brother!” This seemed to be the real sticking point, although from what Tom had glimpsed of Regulus he was much more tolerable and mild mannered than his older brother had been. That probably wasn’t what Lily wanted to hear though.

 

Although what she wanted to hear was beyond him. Because there were times she’d just come up to him and complain, and he’d let her, and they’d go for these walks and they’d be enjoyable but he’d just wonder why he was listening to this.

 

Maybe he just enjoyed hearing someone else’s pain in dealing with Slughorn. That seemed like a reasonable explanation for his complete lapse in sanity. Better that then the fact that it didn’t seem to matter what Lily wanted to talk to him about or where they wanted to go because he almost always ended up saying yes. 

 

“I’ve found, that the best way to inspire respect, is to be absolutely terrifying. If they think that you would kill them in a heartbeat, they’re liable to pay a little more attention.” Tom said, and she laughed, she laughed like it was a joke (and while it’d sort of been one it had also been true). Then, like it usually happened, he was smiling back feeling lighter at the fact that he’d somehow made her happy.

 

For a moment they were silent, her smiling at him, him back at her, walking around the lake together, while inside his head he kept asking himself why this was happening and hadn’t he gotten over these sorts of emotions when he was sixteen?

 

Even with Azrael, it’d only been this distracting in his fifth year, after Azrael had disappeared into the warzone it’d at least… not faded but he’d been able to push it aside. Here it was roaring back, but worse, because she encouraged it. She smiled back, laughed, blushed, and it made it all that harder to repress everything. 

 

“Tom, what was it like for you growing up, I mean, being muggle born?” Lily said, jolting him from his thoughts.

 

“Difficult.” Tom said, and he was tempted to leave it there, he always did with others. Arthur had asked and Tom had made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about it, but somehow that resolve melted when he looked at her and he found himself saying, “I was an orphan during the depression and I wasn’t… well liked.”

 

“Oh, I’m sorry. That was… I guess that was pretty out there, you don’t have to…”

 

“It was a long time ago.” He said shortly, not adding on that he had liked them just as little, and that ultimately it had perhaps been for the best. That orphanage was a part of his shadow, clinging to him, part of his inescapable past that had once shamed him so much.

 

“You probably wanted to know about Hogwarts though.”

 

She nodded.

 

“I was in Slytherin, so it’s a bit different from your experience… Ultimately I would say that I was overlooked for my peers. In Hogwarts, by being an exceptional student, I managed to gain attention and prestige but no one expected me to do anything outside of it.”

 

“You know, I found your academic records, in the trophy room.” She said before saying, “You didn’t tell me you had anything up there.”

 

He’d honestly forgotten about it, the only trophy he remembered was Minerva’s, for a special unnamed service done to the school.

 

“Well, considering it didn’t help with anything I didn’t feel the need to mention it. If it ever becomes useful I’ll let you know.”

 

She said nothing for a few moments, and finally said, “I think you’re the only one who really understands that.”

 

“Understands what?” How pointless his NEWT scores had ended up being, and ultimately that really had depended on the fact that he’d more or less gone into politics, if he’d wanted to work for the goblins or have some sort of apprenticeship they would have been much more useful.

 

“Others, they tell me I have so many opportunities but… I really don’t, do I? I’m glad I’m an apprentice, I like it, but… Did you know James Potter was promoted to captain? He sent me a letter about it, still thinks I’m going to marry him or some nonsense. He’s only been an auror for a year and he’s already a captain.” She scoffed before adding, “Sirius Black too, I mean… I always thought you’d have to be older for that.”

 

“Life is patently unfair.” Tom said before adding a wry and unsympathetic, “Get used to it.”

 

She smiled, laughing a little, “Well, maybe they do deserve it. They were always great at Defense Against the Dark Arts. I just can’t see that idiot Potter taking anything seriously.”

 

Tom couldn’t either, not when they were so soon out of Hogwarts, not without something drastically life changing confronting him.

 

While thinking on Potter and Black and what they were up to now he felt a hand slide into his, stunned he looked over at Lily who was smiling back, “I guess we muggle borns will just have to stick together, won’t we?”

 

And unwittingly, without any real thought, he found himself smiling back.

 

* * *

 

“Tom,” Minerva said at one point, inside the overcrowded Three Broomsticks on a chaperone trip to Hogsmede, having a conversation that Tom would much rather not have in the Three Broomsticks, “You’re not… You’re not dating Lily Evans, are you?”

 

It was mostly his fault, Minerva had tried to have this conversation three times before, and he’d always wormed his way out of it with a skill that amazed him.

 

“No, that would be… creepy and bizarre.” Tom settled on, only to meet Minerva’s highly skeptical expression, which she had every right to because Tom felt that he’d been somehow manipulated into dating Lily Evans.

 

He’d certainly never woken up one morning and thought to himself that it’d be a great idea to date his former student. Although whether their relationship could be called dating was a stretch, they’d never kissed, the most they’d done was hold hands and sure he looked at her but then she was attractive and that didn’t mean anything.

 

She was still friends with Severus Snape, although she’d confessed that they just didn’t understand each other anymore, that she felt as if Severus was slipping away from her. He’d sometimes let things slip, say things, about muggles and muggle borns and she’d just look at him and it’d take him a second or two to realize that he’d said it to her. Regardless, if she’d ever ended up seriously dating anyone, he’d always thought it would have been her childhood friend, Severus.

 

(Or so he told himself, almost desperately, when it seemed to be becoming too real.)

 

“That’s what I thought, but then you always sit together at the quidditch matches…”

 

“I sit with you.” Tom interjected, although technically he sat between Lily and Minerva, and the fact that he was thinking of Lily Evans now as Lily and had been doing so for well over a month was a bad sign.

 

“She brings you gifts, you bring her gifts, and you smile at her.” This last one was said in an accusing manner, eyes narrowed and finger pointing towards him, as if this was the most damning evidence of all.

 

“Minerva, have I ever really smiled at anyone?” Tom asked.

 

“You smile at her! I’ve seen it, you two smile at each other over the staff table like two lovesick students in spring time!”

 

“It’s winter.” Tom pointed out.

 

“I know very well it’s winter!” Minerva responded before returning like a hound with a bone to the topic, “You’re avoiding the issue, Tom! She’s eighteen years old, Tom.”

 

Which was a technically legal age even if it was much too young for him, but he wasn’t admitting to anything, because nothing had been done with his conscious consent. It had all just… snowballed out of his control, “Yes, she is eighteen.”

 

“She was your student!”

 

“Yes, also true.” Tom replied blandly before regarding her, “Are we stating true if somewhat random facts about our coworkers? I’ll go next, Albus Dumbledore has a beard.”

 

Minerva looked thoroughly unamused and didn’t even bother to respond to that, she just glared, and if he was anyone else he would probably find it intimidating. As it was, given the fact that he probably was somehow, inexplicably, dating Lily Evans he just raised his eyebrows in response and put on his best poker face.

 

“You’re too old for her, Tom.” She finally said, flatly, without any room to argue against it. Which was fair because that statement was blatantly true, he was too old for her.

 

He’d even tried to tell Lily that, both subtly and straight to her face. Reminding her that he’d graduated Hogwarts in 1945 but for whatever reason that never seemed to deter her. Even though, by definition, he was starting to become a creepy old man.

 

“Well, then, it’s a good thing we’re not dating.”

 

And that was the point Minerva must have reached her limit because suddenly Tom was soaked in butterbeer, sticky, golden, unpleasant butterbeer, “Was that really necessary?”

 

“You’re being a pig.”

 

“I thought we covered that I am always a pig.” He responded, blinking, reaching for that pull of magic and wandlessly cleaning himself. There was nothing worse than being soaked in sticky beverages.

 

“Alright then, if you aren’t dating her, then what’s this really about?” Minerva said, as if he would really admit to this so easily or she would even believe what he said. Still, it wasn’t as if they’d had conversations different than this.

 

“…I appear to be having a midlife crisis.” Tom finally said, “I hear they’re quite common.”

 

Minerva looked sorely tempted to reach over and throw his still full butter beer into his face, Tom decided it was best to drink it himself before she got the chance, leaving her to silently stew at him waiting for him to admit to something he wasn’t entirely certain was happening.

 

Instead of bickering about this she sighed, “What’s different about her, Tom? Why now, why her? Don’t get me wrong, she was one of my favorite students, and probably always will be but… You’ve had so many opportunities Tom and with so many more… age appropriate people.”

 

He considered denying it again, but that was liable to get him hexed. Besides, Minerva was stubborn and would never let up on the topic if he didn’t directly confront it, and that just sounded exhausting.

 

So, instead he said, “Her eyes.”

 

“Her eyes?” Minerva asked.

 

It was more than her eyes but that was the easiest to identify, because it’d really been the first thing he’d noticed about her, her green eyes. However, he wasn’t about to get into all of that with Minerva McGonagall of all people, so he just offered her a thin smile, stood and left her with the bill without even waving goodbye.

 

He’d probably pay for that later, figuratively and literally, but then as he’d had to remind Minerva every once in a while he really wasn’t the moral upstanding citizen she thought he was. And if that meant skipping out on the bill and the incredibly awkward conversation about his feelings towards former students he’d take it.

 

Because no one should have to endure that sort of conversation even if they’d somehow, completely against their own will, been somehow coerced into dating said former students.


	30. Chapter 30

It was as if the summer itself had a scent. There was the usual taste of magic, the faint and distant scent of fruit on trees and flowers blooming far from London, that almost sour edge that came with the river of time when too many people came and went and came again, and something more patently British than the marble floors of the Wizengamot. This summer, however, had a particular scent to it, one that had been building for some time and seemed to grow stronger each year.

 

It was reminiscent of Orion Black, and Mars, and that confrontation that had never quite been concluded between them all those years ago. Not a shadow, something far more visible, a stain that spreads itself, further and further, until you could barely notice anything besides it, as if it were screaming at you.

 

And, staring at it all, he wondered what the he who could have been, Lord Voldemort, would have made of all of this. Would he have felt that gnawing pit of dread growing inside of him? That feeling that this was far from the end, and that something must give? Or would he have simply been delighted that they made it so easy, so painfully easy, to offer the ideology they always wanted?

 

In Diagon Alley, early in summer, standing beside Lily Evans, he couldn’t help but be reminded of how little of that old, naïve, youthful vision of Voldemort was left inside him.

 

* * *

 

Early in the morning, that same summer’s day, only a week or so after the students had been released out into the world and back to their parents and Tom was making his first outing of the summer to Diagon Alley to settle finances, look at books, and submit his yearly petition to allow him to write the goddamn muggle studies test already.

 

Lily Evans also happened to be accompanying him, for completely unrelated and unimportant reasons.

 

And Minerva McGonagall, having somehow managed to track him down to his office where he was digging through his notes for the most recent annotated copy of the OWL and NEWT exams, dreadful things that were not in the least bit accurate written by some halfblood bureaucrat who thought televisions were powered by micro waves and that rockets were rocking chairs with the unnerving tendency to explode, was looking entirely to suspicious, “It’s not a date, Minerva.”

 

Lily had her own, completely legitimate reasons for meeting him in Diagon Alley, granted she had specifically asked him when he would be going, appeared to have rearranged her schedule to fit with his, and had looked a little too excited for just errands but that wasn’t important.

 

“Really? A man and a young, very young Tom, woman accompany one another for a day at Diagon Alley. Shopping, talking, eating lunch together…” The disapproval from Minerva was almost palpable.

 

“Boring shopping, Minerva, not even that. I’m bound to spend at least a half hour yelling at whatever bureaucrat runs the testing administration to take me seriously. Plus, Lily’s just getting some potion’s supplies which is hardly the most exciting thing…”

 

Minerva cut him off, a glint in her eyes, “Lily! You called her Lily, Tom!”

 

He paused, composed himself, and asked, “Am I not allowed to call people by their first names anymore?”

 

Minerva was not to be dissuaded, “Six months ago, she was Miss Evans, now she’s Lily!”

 

“Well, a year ago, she was my student and that would have been creepy. Now, since she works with me, it’s considered rude if I just refer to her as Miss Evans, and you know how much I hate being impolite.” Tom said, finally pulling out the papers triumphantly and giving Minerva a smug smile. She still did not look impressed.

 

“I would find your intentions much less dubious, Tom, if you would simply admit to them.”

 

Yes, that was certainly one way to say it. The trouble was that Tom hadn’t entirely admitted to them himself yet. Certainly, it seemed as if he was dating Lily, or that Lily had unwittingly coerced him into dating her… Of course, he could have said no at any point, he could say no now. He just didn’t want to, and that seemed to be a large part of it.

 

“You look nice, by the way, for the date you aren’t going on with Lily Evans.”

 

He looked down at himself, noting that yes, he’d chosen some of his nicer clothes, or rather, he’d transfigured some of his more worn clothes for the occasion. Normally he’d quip that he always looked fabulous, which was true, or that he had to do his best to meet expectations, but for whatever reason he couldn’t quite bring himself to say either of those things.

 

Instead he uttered a too solemn, “Thank you, Minerva.”

 

She pursed her lips, gave him a rather cutting look, and finally frankly said, “Tom, I don’t mind that you’re dating her. She’s too young for you, that’s true, and you’re far too old for her even if you do look unnervingly youthful…”

 

“Thank you, Minerva, you’re too kind,” Tom interrupted dully, no longer quite as solemn and more irritated instead.

 

“But that said, if she makes you happy, and if you make her happy… I will simply never understand you, Tom.”

 

It wasn’t the first time Minerva had said something of this nature, since she had made it her mission in life to confirm whether or not Tom Riddle truly was dating Lily Evans, that ‘I accept your decisions but I am certainly dubious of them’, and she did mean it which surely counted for something… All the same, that light, ‘I will simply never understand you’, she had no idea how right she was.

 

Lily Evans didn’t understand him either.

 

And that, more than her youth, more than the unnerving and appealing way she looked like Azrael, that was what made him so very hesitant and perhaps what even drove him to her. She didn’t understand him, she knew nothing about him, she saw this façade of the muggle studies professor a witty, eccentric, and deeply intelligent young man.

 

She’d once asked him, after digging up in the forgotten trophy room, what Minerva’s special services to the school had been in the spring of 1943.

 

He’d told her, in a matter of fact and disinterested tone, that she’d caught a student who’d set loose an acromantula in the halls. And while it wasn’t a lie, Lily had simply nodded her head, and accepted this story as if nothing else resided beneath it.

 

And he’d felt, in that moment, more alone than he had in a very long time.

 

The only person who had ever truly understood him in his entirety, the good and the bad, the great and the terrible, was years’ worth of light away from him and only the echoes of icy words spoken decades ago remained between them.

 

“Right, well with that unwavering bit of support, Minerva, I’m off.” Tom said, making his way out the door, listening to Minerva’s amused and annoyed, “Good luck,” coming from behind.

 

Best not to get caught up reminiscing when he had a not-date to attend.

 

* * *

 

She was wearing a blue dress, something soft, simple, fitting for the early summer day, nothing that should have grabbed at his or anyone’s attention no matter how it brought out the red in her hair or her eyes, but it grabbed at his.

 

Because so easily in his mind’s eye he could paint the fields of Ubik around her, the distant sun and those glowing transparent flowers swaying in the breeze near her ankles, and…

 

And it was at that point she caught sight of him, staring like a jackass in the middle of the street, grinned and waved, and through sheer mortification Tom could pull himself out of his stupor for a barely having escaped adolescence girl and give his own rather strained grin in return as he made his way too her.

 

Honestly, Tom would greatly have preferred being as asexual as Minerva thought he was. He’d love that, then he wouldn’t have all of these feelings about Azrael and now Lily, except he didn’t really have feelings about Lily because he wasn’t admitting to having feelings…

 

“Tom, hello, Tom?”

 

He turned to look down at Lily, into those bright green eyes that were a mix of concern and amusement. She smiled up at him, now realizing she had his attention, “Thought I lost you for a moment there.”

 

“Ah, no, just thinking.” He said, blinking himself back into reality, back into this surreal moment standing in front of her.

 

“You’re always thinking,” she said back, her eyes so like his in that moment, filled with humor and warmth and companionship that even Minerva’s eyes had never quite managed to match.

 

Abruptly, he asked, “So, have you been waiting here long? I had to grab annotated exams from my office and it took longer than it should have…”

 

“No, not too long, besides it gave me time to think of what to do first.” Lily said, and then wrapped her arm in his, “So, I was thinking and first I thought we should go to Gringotts first since it’s hard to get anything done without money…”

 

“A very apt observation,” Tom commented, walking along with her, paying no mind to the road but instead to her quirked lips as she tried to go on in a tone of seriousness but was failing entirely.

 

“But then I remembered that you said talking to Ministry bureaucrats is incredibly time consuming, horrible, and sure to result in the blood sweat and tears of thirty-year-old men. And I thought to myself, while that sounds truly terrible for you, it would make an entertaining start to my morning.”

 

And he realized with trepidation that they were indeed not walking towards the bank, but instead towards the exit of Diagon Alley, to the route through muggle London which would lead them to the Ministry’s main entrance.

 

And he almost groaned aloud, “Oh, no, Lily, trust me when I say that it is awful and you do not want to be involved.”

 

“I don’t know, Tom, you talk about it every year. About how every year you go to the ministry with a copy of the exam and tell them why they’re all idiots and how every year they end up calling security and throwing you out of the building.”

 

That was all true, well he wasn’t thrown out every year, but he’d gained something of a reputation there and judging by the fear in the eyes of whatever lowly ministry peons sat at the desk Tom’s reputation proceeded him.

 

And he stopped in his tracks, staring ahead almost blindly, and for a moment could only feel the rushing of the crowd, the idle conversations of those around them, and the rushing stream of time and, “No, you were right the first time, bank first, then books, then potions, and then I can go and deal with the ministry.”

 

He turned them back around, pulling Lily purposefully onwards towards Gringotts, offering her a pleasant smile when she gave him a rather petulant look, “Come on, Tom, you’re not being any fun.”

 

“I am the Muggle Studies professor, Lily, I am the epitome of ‘not fun” He smiled as he said it, borrowing Albus’ trademark twinkle in the eye, but beneath this was that great gaping shadow that had haunted him earlier.

 

That she didn’t understand.

 

Lily had never seen him truly angry or even truly frustrated, she thought she had, she had seen brief glimpses of his intimidating responses to Potter and his gang, to those who failed to take his class seriously but…

 

But his temper was far deeper and more dangerous than that, and every year that this happened was a year he came closer to breaking, came closer to the year where his magic tore their office apart, flung them against the walls, and he was taken to a back room once again, not for the simple questioning he endured every once in a while, but for something far more pointed.

 

Sometimes he wondered if they were just waiting for him to snap, sometimes he wondered if he was waiting for it.

 

“Fine, have it your way, but I’m going with you later.”

 

His lips curled, he stared out past her to the crowds of witches and wizards, some giving a second glance to his muggle academic clothes, and said in a tone laced far too poignantly with resignation, “We’ll see.”

 

“I’m serious, Tom, I’m going in with you.”

 

He just smiled at her, and she knew him well enough at least, to know that this was his way of saying no. However, he’d come to learn that Lily Evans was beyond stubborn, and if the glint in her own eyes was saying anything about it, then it was that she would fight him tooth and nail to see him… To see whatever it was she thought she might see in that situation.

 

“You look nice, by the way.” Tom commented, lightly, perhaps with too much of an edge of nostalgia to it with Ubik still flashing in his mind, because she turned to look at him with a puzzled expression, trying to decide if she would take the complement or not.

 

“You look nice too,” Lily finally commented, a flush spreading across her face, and a touch of embarrassment to the tone as if she wasn’t quite sure this was what she wanted to say but was going to plunge ahead and say it anyways.

 

What did she see when she looked at him? How did the light reflecting off of him, in angles and arcs, arrange itself inside of her mind? What was most prominent? Was it his eyes, his hands, his smile, or something else entirely?

 

What did he see when he looked at her, for that matter?

 

His foot reached the first marble step to the bank, his arm still in hers, and he let himself be pulled on ahead inside willing his unexpected plague of distracted ness fall out of his mind.

 

* * *

 

Apothecaries always held a certain mystique for Tom, it along with alchemist’s labs, and perhaps the rune maker’s desk, retained that mystic ancient element that other branches of magic had lost in the modern age. One could step into an apothecary and feel as if they were stepping a hundred years or more into the past, so that the modern age outside became diluted, and the sense of history was almost overwhelming.

 

Lily, however, did not seem awe struck at all, and instead seemed all too determined to swiftly fulfil her purpose here as she made her way past the cloves of garlic, jars of newt eyes, feathers of ravens, and more to the desk in the front with the receipt of her order.

 

Perhaps it came with being in the field, everything was suddenly that more mundane.

 

As she rung the bell on the desk, to alert the master or else one of the apprentices that there was a customer, Tom eyed his reflection in the nearest jar of pickled frog legs. In the curved face of the glass a warped, bulbous, reflection of his eye looked back at him, and in that moment he honestly had no idea what Lily saw in him.

 

It probably wasn’t that though.

 

“Oh, Sev, hi, I um… I didn’t know you’d be in today.”

 

Tom turned, and sure enough, there at the front was the sullen, pale faced, Severus Snape staring with ill-disguised alarm at Lily Evans. He was thinner than he had been three years before, perhaps paler too, his fifth year and its aftermath had not treated him well, but all the same there was a determination that hadn’t been there in the spring of his fifth year. While his hands were bony, his hair greasy and tied back, his eyes were dark and blazing and the gaunt cast to his cheeks only served to emphasize this.

 

What did he see, when he looked at her?

 

He looked at her the way a sinner might look at a too forgiving, and too kind, god.

 

“Lily… I saw your order.” It was ragged, especially for Severus Snape’s unusually deep and smooth voice, so painfully awkward and filled with feeling.

 

“Oh, right, of course you did.” Lily said, flushing somewhat, “I mean you do work here, so I guess I should have known. Is it going well, the apprenticeship I mean?”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“Right, well, mine’s going well with Slughorn.” Lily offered him a sardonic smile, a smile Tom couldn’t help but think that she had picked up from him, “He’s the same as ever, by the way.”

 

The boy tried to smile back, that painful, cynical twist of his lips, “Ah, right. He never did like me much, always much more fond of Potter.”

 

Lily’s smile faltered, dimmed, and without it her face looked strangely absent, “I know, and I’m sorry about that Sev, I really am.”

 

“It was never your fault.” He said, too brusquely, trying to cover his wounded pride though it was already so painfully obvious.

 

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry about it.” Lily said, and then added, “I don’t know if it matters or not, we never really talked about it, but I was never okay with any of that… I stopped going to Slug Club meetings.”

 

“I know,” he said shortly, before adding, “And you didn’t have to do that.”

 

“I did, Sev.” Lily took a breath, rebuilding herself, and explained, “It wasn’t just about you, it was a lot of things, but that was a big part of it too… And I just wanted you to know that I was never okay with him or with Potter or with any of it. I just wish you could have had a better time at Hogwarts.”

 

Tom watched her, watched her back, and even without seeing her face he knew that she was struggling to hold the rest in. To point out that Severus Snape had abandoned her, had left her to pal around with Lucius Malfoy, Regelus Black, Crabbe, Goyle, and all those who hated everything he’d come from as he hated everything he’d come from. That he’d whispered to them about the mudbloods and the stain on the country and flinched every time she stared at him with those accusing betrayed eyes.

 

And yet here she stood, even with that pained and stiff posture, still talking with him as if none of that truly mattered.

 

As if he was still Severus and she was still Lily.

 

And all of his transgressions, all of his words, paled against Tom’s own tower of violence and rage.

 

Without a word, without even glancing at the pair of them, he stepped out of the shop and into the street, leaning against the stone façade of the shop with a shuddering breath.

 

Because now he couldn’t stop picturing it. This was it, he would talk, she would talk, they’d move past his words (because they were only words at this point, nothing like a basilisk unleashed against a school, or runes to breach wards and allow Orion Black to slaughter children), and they’d smile at each other and return to that being the childhood sweethearts they should have been.

 

And that was what it was supposed to be. Severus Snape had his dark side, true, Tom didn’t entirely trust him (Tom had goaded him into plotting revenge and murdering Sirius Black in cold blood), but none the less he belonged with her far more than Tom did. They were the same age, they knew practically everything about each other, they had grown up together, and he loved her.

 

He truly loved her, more deeply than most people were capable of, Severus Snape loved Lily and in the face of something like that it would be all too easy to love in return.

 

And Tom shouldn’t even care, but he did, and that in itself was terribly damning.

 

He slid to the ground, sat with his back pressed against the wall and stared glumly out into the crowds. Well, it seemed he had completely and utterly failed at lying to himself.

 

Tom was in deep, very deep, and that was not good.

 

“God,” he said to himself and all who cared to eavesdrop, “Has clearly forsaken me.”

 

“No, but he seems to have cursed you to live in interesting times, Tom.”

 

The world seemed to tilt on its axis, time and space warped and faded, and there was only that odd sense of stillness when everything should be moving forward, and centered in what had once been a raging river of the fourth dimension was the black robed form of the emperor of Ubik, standing in the middle of Diagon Alley, as space bent itself to suit him.

 

Tom felt his jaw moving but no words coming out, the world shaking and growing dim, stopping entirely, and distantly he noted that something was wrong, that space and time itself had just stopped and that had never happened before, but too much of his thoughts were taken up with simply staring and the surreal bitter anger within him.

 

Azrael, Death, smiled softly at Tom, fondly, and sat down across from him in the middle of the street, “We need to talk, Tom.”

 

(He looked the same, how did he always look exactly the same? Even Tom, for his unchanging face, even he had changed subtly over the years. His posture, his clothing, the circles beneath his eyes, but Azrael was always ineffably the same.)

 

“No,”

 

Azrael said nothing, did not move or even, blink, just waited for Tom to elaborate but that bitter well of feeling was rising and he could not stop it. The ability to stop himself, to even want to stop himself, dulled by the fact that this was happening after twenty years and all the words he’d wanted to say but were stopped by time, distance, and the last things they said to each other were now screaming in his ears.

 

“No, you did this to me once already, you don’t get to do it to me twice.”

 

“What did I…”

 

“Don’t act as if you don’t remember!” Tom spat, “Half a year, half a year without a word, without a single reassurance that you were even alive! And that was when you said goodbye, in your own convoluted mess of a way.” He stopped breathed, willed himself to be calm, to allow reality to reorder itself, to stop doing whatever he had done and, “It has been decades, Azrael, Death, whatever you’re calling yourself now. Decades! And here you are, out of nowhere, as if I shouldn’t at all be surprised that you’re here.”

 

Azrael frowned, leaned forward, and for a long moment said nothing, and then, “For what it’s worth, I am sorry. All the same, Tom, you left me no choice.”

 

Tom laughed, threw his hands into the air, “I left you no choice? Me? Tell me, when have my decisions ever affected anything at all? When have I ever made one tiny amount of difference in this world?”

 

All at once he threw the test in front of Azrael, “This, Death, this is all that I’m capable of! Screaming in the ears of bureaucrats who won’t even be bothered to listen! A professor that no one respects, the joke of Hogwarts, this is all that I am! This is what I’m capable of regardless of the choices I make!”

 

“You are capable of far more than you understand! Don’t you dare go belittling everything I’ve done by doing it to yourself,” Azrael snapped back, and just as Tom had never seen Azrael as cold as he had those years ago, he had never heard him quite as commanding as he was now. Azrael stopped, paled, and at once a look of deep regret passed over his features, “I am sorry, Tom, but don’t call yourself insignificant. Please, just don’t.”

 

Tom didn’t comment on that, didn’t comment on the attack against the school, on Orion, or the years stretching between them, because all at once he was tired, more tired perhaps than he had ever been before, “What are you doing here?”

 

“I told you, I need to talk with you…”

 

“When have you ever needed to talk with me?”

 

“I know, I should have contacted you before. I shouldn’t have let it go on so long. But the years kept going by and I have a country to run and I just couldn’t find the words…”

 

“Save your excuses.”

 

Azrael didn’t respond, his eyes burned instead, and they weren’t like Lily Evans. Her eyes didn’t look like that, for all that they were the exact same color, they didn’t have that edge of inhumanity that had always been so prominent in Azrael’s.

 

“They’re your excuses too, Tom,” Azrael offered him a bitter smile, one laced with all the years between them, and the eternity that they had left to whittle away at, “After all, you never contacted me either.”

 

And what was he supposed to say? I’m sorry? That he had no idea what Black had been planning, that he hadn’t cared, that he hadn’t had a choice? And what about the rest? What about Azrael, Death, what about all the secrets he’d never shared? What about the wife he’d once had? What about the expression in his eyes when he had told Tom, regretfully, that it would never work between them? Because that wasn’t Tom’s, that had never belonged to him.

 

“You’ve come at a bad time, I’m busy.” Tom said, failing to point out that with time frozen like this they had all the time in the world.

 

“You’re on a date, I know.” Azrael said, a small quirk of the lips, ironic amusement.

 

“It’s hardly a date.” Tom said, almost on reflex, but just as Minerva had never quite bought this it seemed that Azrael, who should have known nothing about the situation at all, didn’t quite buy it either.

 

“Aren’t we above lying to each other, Tom?” Azrael asked, and seemed to honestly mean it, which in itself was such a bittersweet sentiment. Because for all that he meant it Tom didn’t know if that made it true.

 

“Actually, that was what I meant to talk to you about.” Azrael said with a sigh, and there was a nervous expression on his face, almost apprehensive, and finally he asked, “Tom, why are you dating Lily Evans?”

 

For a moment, Tom was completely and utterly dumbfounded, there was not a single thought in his head, just a pounding and incessant silence where a tumbleweed might roll through. Finally, he asked in turn, “After more than twenty years, twenty years of not speaking to me, you come to ask me about dating Lily Evans?”

 

Clearly, Tom was hallucinating, it was the only explanation.

 

“I know it sounds ridiculous but I’m very serious,” he paused, hesitated, then said, “Tom, you can’t date Lily Evans.”

 

He blinked, blinked again, then asked with more irritated incredulity than before, “Why the hell can’t I date Lily Evans? What, is she too young?”

 

“Oh, well, she certainly is a little young for you…” Azrael conceded but Tom wasn’t about to let him finish.

 

“Is she your daughter?” He asked, but Azrael, while he looked stunned, didn’t flinch, and looked genuinely surprised and even horrified by that question. But then, why did they look so similar and why was Azrael even talking about this?

 

“No, no of course she isn’t my…”

 

And suddenly beyond his musings of Lily Evans’ disturbingly mundane past, to Azrael’s own reasons for being here, his incredulity and anger overtook any ability to think critically at all, “Who the hell do you think you are, coming down and telling me who I can and can’t date?!”

 

“Tom, this isn’t about me! Oh, this is why I didn’t want to do this but you always take everything to an extreme and I just couldn’t stand by and say nothing…”

 

“Oh, wonderful, so is it about me then?! Am I not good enough, is that it? I wasn’t good enough for you and now I’m not good enough for her…”

 

“No, it’s not you either it’s…”

 

“So then she’s the problem!”

 

“Shut up and listen, goddammit!” Azrael pounded his hand on the pavement, and in this still reflection of reality there was a shockwave emanating from his pale fingers. He closed his eyes, breathed out, and said, “It has nothing to do with any of us. She’s supposed to date James Potter, that’s all, nothing more and nothing less.”

 

Tom looked at him, took in the solemn youthful face of the Martian emperor, and then burst into laughter and the unexpectedly surreal turn this already surreal conversation had taken.

 

“What’s so funny?”

 

Well, for one thing, Azrael had returned after two decades of absence to tell Tom that he couldn’t date Lily Evans because ‘she was supposed to date James Potter’ but that was only half of it. 

 

“Do you even know her, Azrael? Lily would never, and I do mean never, date James Potter.” Tom said, shaking his head, still in hysterics.

 

Azrael frowned, “What are you talking about?”

 

Tom finally got a hold of his laughter, shook his head, and said, “Simply that she would never consider dating him, considers him the scum of Gryffindor, which, he is, more or less. Oh, he certainly tries to woo her, sends her what he considers are quite romantic letters, but it’s failing miserably. No, if anyone she would date Severus Snape, but never James Potter.”

 

If only he could bring this up to Lily somehow, if she would even believe him, that the almight emperor of Ubik had visited Tom to tell her that she and James Potter must date. She’d find it hilarious, well, after she found it horribly insulting.

 

Azrael looked almost stricken by this, his face growing significantly pale, and his expression blank and horrified as if he had been stabbed through the ribs. Before Tom could ask, could wonder what this was supposed to mean, the look vanished and something warily awed took its place, “It truly is a new world… Perhaps, perhaps it doesn’t matter at all.”

 

“Well, that was certainly ominous.” Tom said, and for a moment he was back in Hogwarts, with his whole life ahead of him wrily commenting on Azrael’s daily ridiculous antics. He’d missed this, he’d missed it more than he even thought he had, “By the way, is there a reason Lily Evans must date James Potter?”

 

Azrael barked out a laugh, and although it was self-deprecating with some secret festering inside of it, the atmosphere was still somehow lighter between them, “No, no I suppose there isn’t. I’m sorry, that was very rude of me…”

 

He trailed off and glanced at the shop name above Tom’s head, then back to Tom, a speculative glance in his eyes, “You like her.”

 

Well, that was certainly running with the surreal theme of the conversation, and at this point Tom had abandoned logic entirely but nonetheless what a jarring statement. And an unnerving one, especially from him of all people.

 

Tom’s brow furrowed, “How would you know?”

 

Azrael clearly wasn’t listening though, or was not inclined to explain how he could tell this through only this conversation, or what exactly it was he saw when he looked at Tom in this moment, “You like her a lot… Tom, if you’re serious, then you have to tell her.”

 

He’d often wondered, all those years ago, if Azrael didn’t read his mind as he claimed Albus Dumbledore could. Because there were times he cut straight to the heart of things, without giving any reason of how he could. Perhaps, perhaps it was simply that he was Death itself, a concept that Tom had never allowed himself to question too closely.

 

“I can’t.”

 

And there it was, there was everything, so easily laid bare like that. And it seemed so simple, so easily conquered. Far more easily than his feelings for Azrael had been, as they still were, staring at him now with a mix of bitterness, nostalgia, anger, shame, and that ever present yearning for something he was not capable of having.

 

And wasn’t it strange how even now he could not bring that up? Didn’t dare? When all it seemed Azrael wanted to talk about, inconceivably, was Lily Evans. A girl who he shouldn’t even know about…

 

As if, somehow, after all of those years and all of that regret he had finally taken a step away from his own feelings and the future that might have been. Or perhaps he was too stunned for the wave of sentiment to truly hit, that was certainly a nice thought.

 

“You have to, if you mean to have any relationship at all, then you must.”  


“What am I supposed to tell her?”

 

“Tell her that you’re a parseltongue, tell her about Ubik, tell her about Orion Black, tell her about me, even.”

 

Did he tell her about the basilisk?

 

“She’d never stay, then.” He said, if she knew what was good for her she’d turn around and walk in the other direction. Even murderous cold blooded damaged Severus Snape was better than the young Tom Riddle had been.

 

“Then it would never have worked to begin with.” Azrael paused, his eyes boring into Tom’s and said, “That was the trouble with my wife and I, we stopped talking to each other, I stopped talking to her and she stopped talking to me. And in the end we realized there was nothing real left between us.”

 

Azrael squeezed his hand once again, a final time, “Just, tell her, Tom.”

 

Then he stood, looked away from Tom to the distance, leaving Tom to scramble to his feet.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

Azrael glanced back at him, eyes wide, as if he had no idea that Tom hadn’t even begun to say what he had to say, “Ubik, back to Ubik I mean… Tom, you can always write me. And I’ll, I’ll write you first this time. And, and perhaps you can come visit again, soon.”

 

Azrael offered him a bitter, ancient, smile, “Perhaps you can bring Lily with you, even.”

 

Azrael began to grow transparent, the world began to turn once again, and just before Diagon Alley came rushing back and Azrael disappeared he offered the parting thoughts of, “Oh, and Tom, if you do happen to get married and have children… Just, don’t name any of them Harry, for my sake.”

 

And with that very strange plea he was gone, leaving Tom standing by himself outside of the shop waiting for Lily feeling like he very well could have hallucinated the last ten minutes.

 

* * *

 

“Sorry about that, Sev and I haven’t talked in ages and…”

 

He cut Lily off as she exited the shop a half hour later, looking dazed and a little worn, even as she apologetically smiled at him.

 

“No, it’s fine, I ran into an old friend as well.”

 

Lily perked up as she slipped her arm back into his as they walked back out into the street, towards the book shop, “Oh, who was it? Do I know them? Or, I mean, have you mentioned them before?”

 

“No, I haven’t talked about him to anyone in a very long time… It’s been over twenty years since I last spoke to him.” Tom said, and Lily’s eyes widened and for a moment she seemed completely unsure what to say.

 

“Oh, that’s longer than I’ve been alive.”

 

“We had a rather intense falling out.”

 

“But it’s good now?”

 

Was it?

 

No, not at all. It had felt more surreal than anything, like it had been some kind of an odd dream, one that fit easily in with all of his other odd Azrael inspired dreams. And he could feel those old feelings, churning away inside of him, just waiting until later to overflow and be released.

 

“Perhaps,” He settled for, “How is Severus Snape?”

 

Lily frowned, paused, and answered quietly, “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me anymore, not like he used to. He talks but… he never says anything. Sometimes I wonder if we’re friends at all.”

 

He paused then, before they could even see the book store, in the middle of the street. If the universe was going to throw him blatant signs like this then how could he even think to ignore them.

 

“Uh, Tom, why are we stopping?”

 

“There are a lot of things, Lily, that you don’t know about me.” He finally said, “Many of them are not good or kind things.”

 

Lily gave him an odd look, “What? Why are you…”

 

“Ultimately, I am not a kind man but, more fundamentally, I am not a good one either. I won’t go into details here but believe me it’s true. If you want to have a relationship, if you want to be anything more than coworkers or superficial friends, then there are some things that you have to know.”

 

She dubiously nodded, mustered her Gryffindor courage, and said, “Alright…”

 

“You won’t like them.” He cut her off before she could finish that thought, plunge ahead blindly as if that made her braver than her peers, though she’d never known true fear in her life.

 

“But you’ll still tell me.” She said, and there it was, there was the shadow of Azrael so prominent in her eyes. And strangely, although the sight brought up that bubbling feeling of bitter anger once again, it spurred him onwards and made him that much more determined.

 

“Yes, I’ll still tell you.”

 

For a moment, they just stared at each other, people walking by, bumping into both of their shoulders, then Lily reached up with strangely confident fingers to cup his cheeks, leaned upwards and brushed her lips against his…

 

And that was when he caught it, the scent of smoke and dark magic, and he stood from Lily and watched a column of smoke grow behind Lily with wide eyes, shortly followed by darkened flames, and the words, ‘death to blood traitors’ written in jagged, red, light above the burning building.

 

And there it was, the scent of summer.


	31. Chapter 31

They lingered in Diagon Alley only for a moment, just long enough for him to stare, for her to turn in his arms and her eyes to widen with his and the color to drain from her face, painting it almost Death’s color, and then before the aurors could arrive and witnesses could be rounded up, before Tom himself (always on some list somewhere in some secret department) could be taken into the ministry’s backroom he was becoming so very familiar with, he apparated them both back into Hogsmeade, on the front doorstep of the small house that he owned, a few streets down from Minerva’s.

 

For a moment, again, neither moved, Lily just stared at him wordlessly, almost dazed, her mouth slightly open as if trying to think of words to say, perhaps to ask him why they weren’t staying, or what he thought was happening, or perhaps even about what had happened to them only moments before all that (because dammit she had kissed him and he suddenly realized that he’d only been kissed twice in his life, once had been… well, he remembered how that ended and his second had been interrupted by terrorism) but the words didn’t come out.

 

Instead, Tom opened the door and quietly ushered her inside.

 

It was a small place, expanded with charms in every direction, but still small, minimalist, and clearly belonging to only one person who had very few connections. The furniture was both sparse and spartan, there were no paintings, photographs, or portraits on the wall, and what small transfigured and enchanted knickknacks there were all were placed together on a single coffee table, each a small birthday or Christmas memento, usually from Minerva.

 

Minerva had once remarked, when Tom had moved into the place, that it had to rival Azkaban for sheer bleakness.

 

He had never disagreed.

 

In many ways, it was his room in the orphanage, his small quarters on Mars, each and every place that he had ever lived somehow compressed into this time and place, overlapping so that the blank beige walls were instead painted over with his own, often bitter, memory.

 

Lily, in her blue dress and with her red hair, was an explosion of color inside of the place, juxtaposed and clashing with every wall and corner, like someone had spilled something over a stark canvas.

 

For a moment, he paused in the entryway of the kitchen, thinking to sit her down there and pour her a cup of tea, where they could sit and let the light stream in from the undecorated windows, could perhaps even remark upon what had happened, remember if they had anything else that had needed to get done or if it couldn’t be put off for some time…

 

But he had made a decision already, or at least, the start of a decision, and now was perhaps as good of a time that there was ever going to be. Best to rip that band aid off quickly before he become too attached.

 

Or rather, before she became too attached.

 

So instead of pushing her into the kitchen, he ushered her back into the living room, stood over an unremarkable section of carpet, and paused for a final time, finally breaking his own silence.

 

“I said, earlier, that there were some things I needed to tell you.” Tom started, pausing when she startled back to attention, before starting again, “But they are… sensitive, in nature. If you want to hear what I have to say then I’ll need a vow that you will never repeat this information, never impart it to another through thoughts, never act upon it, and act to others as if you had never heard it in the first place.”

 

And he wondered if he had ever thought, ever considered for a moment, the horror that it was to bear your soul completely to a fellow human being.

 

He took a breath, let it out, and asked as calmly as he could manage, “Do you understand, Lily?”

 

For a moment, she just stared at him, looking him over, then finally, uncertainly, “Does this… Does this have to do with… I mean, you weren’t involved in that…”

 

“No,” Tom said swiftly, “Nothing to do with that, nothing to do with today, but… If you want us to be… anything, if you want any future with me that isn’t a charade, then you have to know.”

 

She breathed out, almost in relief, but then appeared to catch herself and asked instead, “What happens if I can’t make that vow?”

 

He offered her a small, thin, smile, “We go back to work, you go back to being Slughorn’s apprentice, me the eternal Muggle Studies professor, and we never mention this ever again.”

 

But she was smart enough to know what he wasn’t saying out loud, that if she didn’t make this vow here and now, if she hesitated, then they were finished, and all that would be left for them was a road of strained politeness and unspoken secrets.

 

This was his hand, offered down to Lily Evans as Azrael’s had once been offered to Tom Riddle, so that she might join him on Hogwarts’ rooftop.

 

For a moment, speaking to her rationality, the rationality that seemed to so elude most of her Gryffindor peers, she wavered. She was probably stunned by the events today, although the sentiment had been rising, and Tom couldn’t find it in himself to be truly surprised by the turn of events even if he would have to spend more time thinking on what this meant for him later… Still, there had been something far more jarring in this than schoolyard taunts, something large had been on fire, something Tom hadn’t wanted to stick around to see, things were all coming together.

 

At any rate, perhaps Lily didn’t have it in her to listen to all of Tom’s secrets (and what secrets they were) right now.

 

He could hardly fault her for it, he’d always had the worst timing when it came to these sorts of things.

 

Then again, perhaps she was thinking instead on the consequences of her possible actions here or what Tom had to say that was so dire that it could possibly prompt this kind of a condition from her.

 

Perhaps she realized that there were limits to her own budding affection for him.  

 

Then, slowly, that spark of fire returned to her eyes, something brighter and more filled with life than Azrael’s had ever let his be, and she nodded, took his hand in hers, and said, “I, Lily Evans, do hereby swear to never repeat what I am now told or shown, never act on it, never reveal it through my thoughts, and never give any indication of what I’m about to be told or shown by Tom Marvolo Riddle, I promise.”

 

A blinding light grew between their hands, perhaps brighter and more searing than it should have been between two ordinary wizards, but then it faded and they were left there, sweat on both of their foreheads as they stared dumbly at each other.

 

“Right,” Tom finally managed, prying his fingers from hers, both of their knuckles white, “Thank you, Lily.”

 

Then, before he could think more on it, more on how he felt that she had agreed, that she had treated it seriously, considered it, and agreed, he traced a hand against the carpet, golden foreign runes swirling beneath his fingertips, and a staircase downwards appearing out of thin air.

 

Carefully, he ushered her down in front of him, closing the entrance up behind him, and letting the room light itself with Azrael’s old wards inscribed upon the walls. As the light flooded the room books made themselves known, all the dozens upon dozens of books, stacked high in great unsteady pillars, that Tom had relocated here over the years, or else always kept here, in the corner was a projector, stack of silver canisters filled with dark film reel waiting patiently for whenever Tom might next wander down into his forbidden kingdom.

 

And then, of course, all the banned books he kept here and the things more contraband than even that.

 

“This is…” Lily started, eyes darting everywhere, on the walls and the runes, on the book titles, into the corner, but Tom paid her no mind as he navigated her through the first initial pillars of books and into a swiftly conjured chair beside an equally swiftly conjured table, all done with little thought and only an absentminded swish of his wand.

 

“Yes,” Tom said, moving away from her and towards the back of the room, grabbing an old forgotten kettle of tea as well as the last of the tea from Ubik, brewed from the leaves that the god emperor of Ubik had once created out of the barren Martian wasteland, “This is where I keep everything, all of the things the ministry decrees I should not have, and everything I think will one day make them nervous if it doesn’t already.”

 

Returning he conjured his own seat, sat down, and with warming the tea with another stroke of silent magic he continued even as he poured a cup for both himself and her, “Not all of it is illegal, yet, but there is more than enough to have me brought in for questioning even if I was an ordinary citizen. The walls alone are enough to have me charged…”

 

He motioned to the walls, to the runes there, clearly non-Germanic in origin, “All necessary though, you see, occasionally the ministry pays me a visit, at home or in my office, and then sometimes they kindly invite me to come to them instead and talk for a few hours in an empty room with a silver table. I always leave at least one thing behind in my office, something not entirely banned but not entirely approved either, or else they think I’ve been hiding something, which is perhaps fair of them… Of course, one day, perhaps soon, they may invite me for an extended stay, and every time they show up on my doorstep I always wonder if today is going to be that day.”

 

Lily sipped at her tea, green eyes so very wide, and he could see the thoughts crashing themselves together and trying to reach a conclusion that she wasn’t quite able to say, “They wouldn’t… I mean, the ministry isn’t…”

 

“The ministry, you’ll find, is far more serious about Ubik than it is about mudbloods,” Tom noticed her flinch at the word but he continued regardless, “Even so I am a special case, because I am one of two people that worked for the ministry who has ever been to Ubik, I was once assistant to the English ambassador on Mars.”

 

He paused, considered her again, young Lily Evans sitting in his contraband basement, trying to keep up with everything he was saying and everything he wasn’t, and he smiled at her drily and added, “And, of the two of us who have been there, I’m the one who hasn’t appeared to have aged in more than twenty years.” 

 

Then, with perhaps more of an air of dramatics than was required, here in his basement with a girl only just out of Hogwarts in the way that Tom Riddle himself had once been just out of Hogwarts, he announced, “I, Tom Marvolo Riddle, who was once, not so long ago, anything but a Muggle Studies Professor and instead an aspiring and ruthless revolutionary, am now about to tell you the strange history of my life.”

 

He started again before Lily could think to ask why it was necessary to go so far back, to the very beginning of all of this, but there was no other way to truly understand what Tom Riddle was than to see him at his beginning, “I was born December 31st 1926, in the middle of the night, just on the edge of being born in 1927. My mother, a poor, hideous, woman, dying of cold and pregnancy, wandered in from the merciless winter of the London streets and into Wool’s Orphanage. There, she died in the aftermath of childbirth, living only long enough to name her child after the father, a Mr. Tom Riddle, and her own father, a man by the name of Marvolo.

 

That’s where my mother’s role in this story ends, this is the only story I’d ever hear about her, and only then through Mrs. Cole’s drunken ravings and cutting sober cruelty. As for my father, he plays less of a role than even that, Tom Riddle and Marvolo will forever remain mysteries, but then, perhaps that’s for the best, I have always felt I would undoubtedly be disappointed in them.”

 

He paused, but Lily was simply listening quietly, staring at him, thoughts still flooding behind her eyes as she sipped at foreign tea, a tea she would never taste anywhere else in England, and seeing this Tom continued.

 

Tom slipped, almost mechanically, into the third person as he told this, as if seeing the child he had once been from the outside in, dissecting him through word alone and tearing him to pieces, “Tom Marvolo Riddle grows up during the depression, and being a penniless orphan, is poorer than most, even if he does have the luxury of a roof over his head in winter. However, he is ruthlessly intelligent, lacks any form of empathy, and possesses a wondrous talent that even he doesn’t know the name for. All he knows, is from a very young age, is that he is different than the other orphans and is all the more extraordinary for it.

 

He terrorizes the orphans he lives with daily, he steals from them, small things, inconsequential broken things… None of us owned much, of course, and nothing important, but that was never the point. I stole, not because I wanted what they had, but because I wanted them to know that I had the power to take it from them, that I had power over them and that there was nothing they could do about it.”

 

A sip of tea, a thought on how to phrase it, then, “I pushed some of them down stairs, without using my hands, a push of magic and poor brutish Dennis would be careening down the stairwells at the risk of breaking his neck. At seven years old, I lynched Billy Stubb’s beloved pet rabbit, hanging it from the rafters and leaving it floating with invisible wire wrapped around its neck, so that everyone in the orphanage had to stare at it until Mrs. Cole found the ladder so she could reach up and take it down. You see, the young Tom Marvolo Riddle found this undeniably hilarious, how he could make the little ants quake before him.”

 

Lily had paled, even at the theft she had paled, now she appeared almost stunned, pausing in sipping her tea, staring at him with wide disbelieving eyes while he just smiled sardonically back, wondering if this was what she looked like when fifteen-year-old Severus Snape called her a mudblood.

 

“I was a rather nasty sort, back then, I don’t deny it. I was utterly convinced that I was the übermensch and there was little that could possibly dissuade me. Though, to his credit or detriment, in 1936, when he came to deliver my Hogwarts letter, Albus Dumbledore gave it a solid if misguided effort.” He paused again, almost unwillingly, except now that this odd confessional had started even he couldn’t seem to stop it.

 

“I’ve always hated Albus Dumbledore, because he has always been such a self-righteous and stubborn fool, and there hasn’t been a single action he’s taken that has ever convinced me otherwise,” he said, “He talked to Mrs. Cole, before meeting with me, and I’m sure she told him quite the story so that by the time he’d climbed the staircase in his canary yellow suit he had more than enough of a first impression. I made it worse, the eleven-year-old Tom Marvolo Riddle lacked the older version’s sophistication or understanding of social niceties, he was blunt and honest with his cruelty, and after realizing that Dumbledore was not from the asylum, there to cart Tom Riddle away to the nuthouse, eagerly confessed to theft and more.

 

Dumbledore, responded, by appearing to set my wardrobe and everything I owned on fire.

 

Needless to say, I didn’t learn the lesson he intended that day, instead, I learned that one can never trust a figure of authority, no matter how yellow their suit.”

 

Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “Also, coincidentally, I revealed that I had the ability to talk to snakes.”

 

Lily, having made the unfortunate decision to take a sip right then, almost spit it out and began to splutter. Tom offered her a sly and rather amused grin, before adding, “Of course, Dumbledore never made any real remark on it.”

 

Before Lily could quite recover her bearings, he continued, “Thus, Tom Riddle enters Hogwarts in the fall of 1937, and is predictably sorted into Slytherin, where he also predictably learns that he’s not much better off here than he was at the orphanage, because while there he was an orphan now he is a mudblood, something much worse. Naturally, this grates on him quite heavily, never the less he swiftly rises to the top of his class and is largely ignored by his classmates after the expected and ineffective harassment during that first year.

 

Likely, I would have continued on this path, with whatever twists and turns it might have had in store for me, but something diverted me from this, one key moment in my life.

 

You see, Tom Marvolo Riddle had met Death on the train to Hogwarts.”

 

Here Lily finally interjected, "Death?! What does... What does that even mean?"

 

Tom just smiled at her, at the growing frustrated flush on her cheeks and responded, “It means that I met Death on the Hogwarts Express, of course, I didn’t know it at the time.

 

He had the indecency to look nothing like he was supposed to, instead appearing as rather jarring, almost off-putting, eleven-year-old boy from god knows what backward country. Ridiculously pale, almost translucent, thin bird like bones, ravens’ feathers for hair, and of course bright green eyes, your eyes coincidentally enough… His conversational skills matched his appearance, at meeting me he asked what year it was, and then broke into hysterics claiming he’d gotten lost somewhere along the way but that he might as well go to Hogwarts since he was already on the train.

 

Needless to say, I was rather offended at the time, especially when all he would give me was this idiotically bemused smile and not even a name to go with it. Still, even as a Hufflepuff, our paths kept crossing, him having the unnerving ability to do perfect wandless magic even if he did fail all his essays, and our paths kept crossing to the point where eventually, in his second year, Tom Riddle, for whatever reason, befriends the aloof and foreign Hufflepuff…”

 

Tom found himself trailing off, looking at the runes on the wall, wishing he’d thought to put a clock down here somewhere but not quite feeling the need to cast tempus. His life story was taking more time than he’d thought it would, and they were still only in the very beginning. His eyes shifted then to the rather overwhelmed looking Lily Evans, who looked so lost in her own thoughts.

 

“Do you want to continue?” he asked.

 

“What?” she responded, startled, almost spilling her even as he poured her another cup.

 

“Do you want to hear the rest?” Tom repeated.

 

She blinked at him, blinked again, leaned back as if to help take all of him in at once, and then said, “I can’t picture you being like that.”

 

That, of course, being little Tom Riddle the antichrist.

 

Tom offered a rather harsh and short laugh, “You’d better picture it, Lily, because that’s how it was. Ask Dumbledore, he likes you well enough, he’d probably tell you, even if it is ancient history.”

 

Then, rather sardonically, he offered, “I’m a man comprised of masks, great images thrust upon me, with me morphing myself into whatever I thought best suited my purpose. And I was young then, much younger, and time has exhausted me.”

 

She made no comment one way or the other so he added, “I don’t regret it, all of Tom Riddle’s pettiness back in those days, or at least, not in the way you no doubt hope I do. I regret the stealing, the casual acts of violence, not because it was wrong to steal from them, but because it was a pointless stupid action fueled by my own pettiness and need for self-assurance that I was something special.”

 

He met her eyes, Azrael’s eyes in her face, but so much younger than his had ever been, and said slowly, “The story, Lily, will get much worse before it gets better.”

 

He leaned forward, almost across the table, eyes pinning hers and leaving no room for escape, “Do you want to continue?”

 

She opened her mouth but before she could say a word he interrupted, “Think very carefully, Lily, because you will have to live with this knowledge, unable to tell a soul or act on any of it, for the rest of your life.”

 

She closed her mouth, swallowed, and then, “I need a few minutes.”

 

* * *

 

They sat in tense and awkward silence, Tom leaning back in his chair, arms folded behind his head, eyes closed and Mars blooming behind his lids, as if in a permanent high summer.

 

There was only the imaginary breeze inside of his head and the sound of Lily’s fingers tapping against her cup of tea, now empty, outside of it, as she quietly contemplated the room, his books, and of course Tom himself.

 

Eternity, Tom mused, almost seemed to drip from the walls down here in the basement, trapped somehow in those painstakingly painted golden runes.

 

“I want to know more about the beginning,” her voice was almost like a gunshot, waking from his musings as his eyes snapped open to find her gazing at him rather mulishly, “I want to know more about what it was like when you got to Hogwarts, and meeting Headmaster Dumbledore.”

 

Tom straightened himself and said, “Well, there’s not much to tell. He was a professor then, deputy headmaster, but not headmaster yet. Still had the absolute worst taste in clothing I’ve ever seen… More serious then, blunter about his feelings and distrust, he made no pretense of liking me in any of my classes for all the pretense I gave of liking him.

 

As for my life in the orphanage, well, what’s there to say? Mrs. Cole descended into alcoholism at a rapid rate, drowning in the gin even in my earliest memories, the priest crossed himself whenever I walked by, at least, towards the end and otherwise Dennis was stupid and large for his age, terrified witless of me by the end though, Billy Stubbs too adorable to function, Amy Bishop a pleaser, otherwise I can’t say I recall most of them.

 

For however long a period in my life it was it never made much of an impression, rather, I always thought of it as a waystation, a temporary place where I had to sit still and wait for the next opportunity to invite me to its doorstep. I never meant to stay in that place.”

 

She nodded slowly, almost carefully, filing this away somewhere inside of her head then asked, “What about the snakes? You said you could talk to snakes but that must mean at least one side of your family must have been…”

 

He cut her off, “Ah, yes, that comes up in the next part of my story, but in short the answer to your question is no. I never did manage to track down my relatives and have little interest in doing so, even now. As far as I’m concerned, I am Slytherin’s last surviving heir, and I have no interest in publicizing this fact.”

 

Perhaps, reasonably, she was openly gaping at him as he said this.

 

To which he could only shrug and state with more than a little irony, “It would ruin my reputation as Muggle Studies professor, after all.”

 

At first, she laughed, a bright startled thing, then almost choked on her tea, and flailed about for a moment while she tried to get her bearings again. Finally, when she could talk again, she asked, “And Dumbledore didn’t tell you?”

 

“No,” he responded with amusement, “Dumbledore, to this day, has never said a word about it one way or the other.”

 

For a moment he wondered if this would be the last question, this pondering of what went on in Albus Dumbledore’s head, but then after slowly nodding once again Lily quietly asked, “Why did you do it, Tom? Why did you… do everything?”

 

“Because I saw no reason not to,” he stated coldly, and perhaps more of himself bled through in that moment than he had ever let anyone besides Orion Black and Azrael see, “I was better than the other orphans, than everyone, superior yet unacknowledged. The laws of mortal men did not apply to me and any attempt to bend me to any will was to be met with harsh retribution.”

 

He allowed himself a cold, superficial, smile, “You don’t understand, Lily, I wasn’t like them.”

 

Regardless of whether she understood or not, she didn’t blink or flinch, but instead kept staring with the eyes of a god emperor, then stated, “I want to hear the rest of it, I want you to continue the story, Tom.” 

 

* * *

 

“You have to understand that he was a genius, I was a genius, but he was far beyond my capabilities, at least, when it came to practical uses of magic. Theoretically he was an idiot, that mad little Hufflepuff that no one had any idea what to do with. It drove me up the wall, here’s this idiot, constantly dressed for someone’s wake, outperforming me without even looking like he’s trying.

 

So that’s what half of it was at first, a way to learn wandless magic from him. This ended up, of course, being more unsuccessful than not, mostly because I wasn’t quite ready to learn what he was teaching. It’d take me years to become remotely proficient, and even then, even now, I’m nowhere near his capabilities.

 

He also spoke in verse, constantly, or else convoluted metaphors that never made any sense to anyone at all, or if they did, then only twenty years after the fact. He never really lied, but only because what he said was so ridiculous that you’d never actually figure out what he’d said in the first place.

 

Small bloody wonder I was his only friend…”

 

There was too much more to say on him, on those early years of their friendship, small details he couldn’t think of how to put into words or felt there was no time to put into words. Tom’s constant exasperation and aggravation that had over the years somehow turned into something resembling fondness. The glint in his eyes whenever he looked at Tom, that knowing and somewhat amused expression at Tom’s latest antics, at his hopeless ambitions.

 

What must Azrael have seen then, when he first met Tom Riddle on the train, how had the eleven-year-old orphan looked to him? And did the older Tom Riddle look any different to him now?

 

“The war, the second world war, began in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. In 1941, my third year, the Blitz began and wouldn’t end until spring of that same year. Being muggleborn the war, that war, touched me far more than it would my wizarding counterparts. Azrael… That was his name, or at least, the name he went by, understood and helped me with wards for the bombs but no one else… The war did not touch them, Lily, to them it was nothing more than an inconvenient and petty muggle thing that had no bearing over their lives. My third year, I went to Headmaster Dippet, to plead to stay over the summer in Hogsmeade. I had asked before, my first year, but this time I truly meant it. I didn’t know if the bombs would stop, I didn’t know if there was anywhere for me to go back to, all I knew was that going back to London could very well be going back to my death.

 

Do you know that he smiled at me? He looked at me, Lily, the way that Horace Slughorn would look at you, with that false sympathy and understanding in his eyes, and he said no. He said no, that there were to be no exceptions, and that he was terribly sorry but those were the rules and he couldn’t just be expected to go breaking those, now could he?

 

And that’s when it started, the seeds in my head began to take root and grow, the idea of becoming a great revolutionary, the great dark Lord Voldemort who would shape the wizarding world into his own image, and seeing these people crawl on their knees before his glory as they might a god…”

 

He paused, glanced at her, almost to anchor himself, before he continued, “It wasn’t really the Blitz that did it, rather, the Blitz, Dippet, they pushed thirteen-year-old Tom Riddle in the right direction. I’d always hungered for greatness, without the slightest idea of the weight that true greatness holds. I strained at the bonds of my own mediocrity.

 

On hearing vague outlines of my ambitions, Azrael said to me once, stealing Frank Herbert’s words that weren’t yet written, ‘Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.’

 

Of course, I wouldn’t understand at all what this meant until years later.”

 

He paused, allowing himself to drink a cup of tea and gauge Lily’s interest, before continuing on in a lighter tone, “Time moves on though, about a year later I was invited to my first Slug Club meeting, and as you already know, I would only ever attend the one. What I didn’t tell you at the time was that, like how your decision in some ways boiled down to Severus Snape, my decision to discard all my future invitations in some ways boiled down to Azrael. Oh, it was awkward before then, filled with purebloods, too good silverware, champagne, but it wasn’t until Charlus Potter one of the most tolerant and light purebloods that you could have ever met, made some offhand comment about Azrael that I couldn’t find it in myself to forgive, that I didn’t want to forgive really.

 

The truth of the matter was, though, that if I’d been nearly as ambitious as I thought I was I would have stayed. I would have milked Slughorn for all the information he was worth, cozy on up to the pureblood heirs, done everything to insinuate myself into the correct place in society. I didn’t though, because I think despite all my vivid fantasies of grandeur, I already knew that it was never going to happen.

 

This idea, this vision of Voldemort, it was just a dream I had indulged myself in, there was nothing concrete inside of it. More, the very premise of Voldemort, of liberating himself from muggle culture, did not acknowledge that the wizards were just as disappointing as the muggles had been, they just had more money and magic to show for it.

 

But none the less, those were my great concerns, for about two years. Azrael, however, had been focused on much grander things, as he always was.

 

It was the war that concerned him, more than anything else it consumed him, Stalingrad haunted his dreams, he said. I never took it too seriously, he was always rather melodramatic, and I had my own concerns…

 

Such as my fifth year, where I had the horrifying realization that I was a homosexual, or, at the very least, sexually attracted to my only friend, Azrael.”

 

Lily, perhaps predictably, spat out her tea once again and began to choke on the liquid, her face growing bright red, banging her fist on the table as she tried to catch her breath. Tom waited even while she wheezed, until she had taken deep calming breaths and managed to look him in the face again, to open her mouth to question him, and then he cut her off before she had a chance to say a single word.

 

“Of course, I can’t really call myself a homosexual these days, since I’m very much into you, as everyone seems to be painfully aware. But still, having only truly been interested in two people in my life, I’m willing to say that it’s apparently fifty-fifty which way I’ll swing on any given day.”

 

Lily opened her mouth further, leaning forward, about to say something to interrupt this but Tom pretended he didn’t even notice and just kept talking, a small amused smile tugging at his lips.

 

“At any rate, it was a bit of an uncomfortable surprise, and I didn’t appreciate any of it. It made me slow, stupid, and so very distracted. Perhaps more distracting than this though was that this was the year I finally hunted down what it meant to be a parseltongue. Suddenly I had a history, a legacy to live up to, I truly was better than all the purebloods around me and I had the undeniable means to prove it. And yet… And yet I was still only a mudblood.

 

I became obsessed with tracking down the Chamber of Secrets, in living up to my own destiny, and being a n exemplar prefect and obliterating my OWLs. As a result, I suddenly didn’t have time for Azrael anymore, and Azrael, whose eyes had been turned eastward all year, he took that as his cue to leave Hogwarts altogether…”

 

He stopped, paused, and noted silently to himself that this was where his story became very tricky and very dangerous. This was where the basilisk would come into play, the dark arts, Tom’s brief ascent into lordship and descent into nihilism.

 

The early Tom could be written off as the product of a bad childhood, a misguided boy in need of barrels of therapy, but there would be no going back after the basilisk.

 

There wasn’t anything she would be able to do about it, nothing she could say, nothing she could do, nothing she could even think, but all the same…

 

All the same, he didn’t want her to flinch, and he didn’t want her to leave.

 

But he also didn’t want her to see him as anything other than what he truly was, at the heart of things.

 

He considered her then, and thought how much younger she was than him, and yet nothing like what Tom Riddle had been at her age, just out of Hogwarts… She was so young, untried and untested for all the opposition she’d faced thus far, and it was impossible to tell which way she’d fall when the story was over and done, all Tom’s darkest secrets laid bare.

 

But he was so very tired of superficial relationships, or even deeper relationships covered by a thin veneer of misunderstandings and pleasantry. Minerva and he would never truly be friends, never the closest of friends, if only because she would never know the truth of what he was.

 

Lily Evans, eighteen years old, miraculously seemed to have the potential to, or perhaps that was only because he kept painting the Hufflepuff Azrael over top of her.

 

“In short,” he continued, as if he’d never hesitated in the first place, “I was a mess with his disappearance. And I was the only one who was remotely affected by it, to everyone else, the students and the faculty, it was business as usual, they assumed he had dropped out and run back to whatever bleak corner of England he came from. Whatever respect I’d had for the rest of them, faculty or student, disappeared with their indifference, and suddenly I couldn’t tell the difference between the muggle orphans and the wizards I went to school with.

 

My obsession with the dark arts, which had already been budding at that point, bloomed alongside my obsession with Slytherin, and thus in the worst possible state of mind I finally stumbled across the Chamber of Secrets, with Salazar Slytherin’s parting gift of a basilisk waiting inside.

 

But I didn’t approach it as Slytherin’s heir, being his heir meant nothing to me then, instead I was the mudblood Tom with this illusion of pureblood thrust upon him. And so, I decided to stage a social experiment, my own version of the Blitz, with Hogwarts itself as my testing ground. I would see once and for all if blood purity was the sham I had always suspected it was, and the basilisk would be my instrument to do so.”

 

And he could see it, he could see the realization going through her like a stone dropped into the well of her eyes, plummeting downwards, gathering speed as it accelerated towards the center of the earth, until finally, at her very soul, it crashed to the very bottom.

 

“The rules I gave myself were this: unless asked directly by someone I would not make any comment on the resulting events, the end would be marked by the general community finding a cause whether this was true or false, and until that end was reached the experiment would continue regardless of consequences.

 

And there were consequences. At first, they thought little of it, someone had it out for Parkinson, there was concern at the power it took to petrify someone, but it was a one-off event. Of course, then it spread, pureblood, mudblood, halfblood, no one was truly safe from it, whatever it even was, and the fear began to spread like a plague through the school.

 

Just as I had suspected, the basilisk couldn’t tell one student’s blood from another, they were paralyzed in proportional measure, and even Salazar Slytherin, it seemed, could not make a true distinction.

 

As for myself, I felt nothing during any of it, just a hollow sort of apathy, that growing pit of nihilism I’d found myself steadily crawling into over the years. Not even watching Abraxas Malfoy squirm in his seat at the fear of the guillotine overhead, something Grindelwald’s advance in France or the muggle war had managed to do, did nothing for my satisfaction.

 

I was a husk of a human being that year.

 

Then… Then someone died.”

 

Closing eyes, he could see her body then, that pale wide eyed body, the hint of realization on her face as she stared her death in its golden eyes…

 

“Myrtle Stewart, muggleborn girl in my year, with no great ambition or talent, a Ravenclaw… I’d always found her obnoxious, everyone did, her house mates made it a game of tormenting her, which of course led to her death as she had the misfortune of being alone in corners after curfew a little too often.

 

Her funeral was a small one, relatively unattended, I imagine there was a larger one for her in the muggle world, but of course, in a way she had been dead to her parents for years, ever since she had received her Hogwarts letter.

 

She was the breaking point for Dippet, he summoned the prefects and the staff into his office, and he said that this came to an end now, unstated was to stop it before the next victim was someone important. Minerva McGonagall, within the week, performed a special unnamed service to the school by apprehending Rubeus Hagrid, who had been illegally raising an acromantula inside of his trunk. Hagrid was shipped off to the Wizengamot, found guilty, his wand snapped, and only thanks to Albus Dumbledore’s pleading was the boy granted a position at Hogwarts as the caretaker’s apprentice.

 

And that night, I went into the chamber of secrets, and killed the basilisk.”

 

The silence was almost deafening, you could hear the sound of a pin dropping, and as he stared at her, watching her swallow, her eyes fluttering closed, looking on the verge of illness, he felt as if it stretched an eternity and a half.

 

Time around her, around them, seemed to slow, eddying out around them in small tense waves, as if the universe itself hinged upon her words.

 

Finally, she looked across at him, a thousand words inside of her eyes, but only one escaping her lips in desperation and horror, “Why?”

 

And he felt so distant from himself, even as his lips tugged into an almost desperate smile, “Because I had discovered that my life had no meaning, and I wanted everyone to suffer the way I had suffered, was still suffering. At the time, I thought I was simply putting everyone in their place, showing them what a pureblood really was at the end of things, what we all were at the end of things, that even a basilisk bred by Salazar Slytherin himself couldn’t tell the bloody difference.”

 

She shook her head, slowly, face pale, eyes dry and wide as she attempted to put him back together into something she understood, “Someone died, you killed someone, and you let Hagrid take the blame for you, let Minerva arrest him and live with that guilt all of these years… How could you do that? How can you live with that?!”

 

For a moment, he said nothing, just stared at her, wondering if he had expected some other reaction or if the numbness he felt creeping through him, a strange sickly relief, meant he had expected this all along, “If they had come for me, if they had put two and two together, I wouldn’t have resisted. In my mind, at the time, the rules I’d made had become absolute, there was nothing that existed outside of them, outside of the experiment… I had no future. Unfortunately, they instead found the easiest and best explanation, Hagrid and a giant spider in his trunk, and I felt it was punishment enough for us all to live with that.”

 

He offered her a brittle, painful, smile, “Something would have come of that spider, eventually. Sometimes, I wonder if I didn’t do him a favor, better to be framed for a crime he did not commit, then to have been responsible himself for one.”

 

She offered nothing back, no hint of any expression, and the smile dripped from his lips.

 

He sighed, leaned back, felt himself falling back into place, that resigned position he always seemed to find himself in, “Remember, Lily, you won’t be able to tell anyone, not the Wizengamot, Minerva, Hagrid, or even Albus Dumbledore were you so inclined. You’ve made a vow.”

 

“If you confessed now, if you told them now, then Hagrid could get another wand, he could become a professor…”

 

“Perhaps,” Tom interjected, “But then, perhaps not. He was such a convenient excuse for the Wizengamot, they’d fight tooth and nail to keep him guilty regardless of the truth of what happened. Besides, he’s a half-giant, it is far too convenient for far too many that a half-giant would be capable of murder versus the venerated and unproven heir of Slytherin wearing the guise of a mudblood professor.”

 

She didn’t deny it, perhaps seven years at Hogwarts had taught her that much, that there was truth to what he said, instead her eyes narrowed and burned and she asked, “Don’t you feel guilty?”

 

Ah, now there was the real question. He met her eyes, stared into the very depths of them, to the center of Lily Evans, “No. I hadn’t been in my right mind then, and I would hardly repeat it now even if I had the ability, but to Tom Riddle at the time there had been no other roads left to take. Besides, there are other things to be guilty over.”

 

To her strength, she did not flinch, even as he leaned forward, voice colder than it had been throughout his tale, and reminded her once again, “I never claimed to be a good man, Lily, and I did warn you that I was capable of great and terrible things.”

 

She stood abruptly, hands slamming down at the table as she stared down at him, and the tea in her cup rippled.

 

* * *

 

For a good five minutes, perhaps longer with time warped as it was, she paced. Back and forth she walked among the stacks, never once glancing in his direction, instead burning holes into the floor and his books and the walls with her eyes alone.

 

She was not gone, Tom had expected her to storm out the door ages ago, and judging by her fevered pacing back and forth she didn’t intend to leave anytime soon. It seemed Lily Evans was going to be here until the very end.

 

Tom simply waited, sipping from his tea as he watched her, his mind cast back to that fifth year as he tried to remember what it was that had started him down that mad and violent path. It had seemed so inevitable, so clear and questionable, at the time… But now, now he could hardly remember why it had felt so very necessary, where there had been no other path to take.

 

He was a stranger even to himself it seemed.

 

Finally, with no warning at all, she stopped back at her chair, scraped it back from the table, and threw herself back into it with an accusing and hostile look geared towards him, “What are you trying to do here?”

 

Now that, he hadn’t expected. He felt his eyebrows raise as he took in her utter seriousness, her impatience as she waited for some answer from him, finally he responded, “My deathbed confession.”

 

“Well, I don’t believe it, not really,” at the sight of his dubious expression she continued, “There’s no way that some can go from a psychopath like that to the person you are now; there’s something you’re not telling me.”

 

He could almost laugh, here he was, pouring his heart and soul out to her, and she didn’t even have the decency to believe it. Instead he shrugged, “Well, it’s true, I am a sociopath, I’ve always been one.”

 

However, this seemed to do nothing to convince her, instead seemed to even embolden her as if he had just unwittingly provided her evidence to the contrary.

 

“That Tom Riddle,” she said, pointing directly at him as she did so, “The one you’re talking about, would never have told me this, even with a vow. He’d have never become a Muggle Studies Professor. He’d never have taken Arthur Weasley as his apprentice, even when the board of directors and the Wizengamot and everyone in Britain had made a laughingstock of him. He’d never had made friends with me, would never have agreed to take me to Diagon Alley or watch him barter with bureaucrats to just be able to write an exam to a class that no one cared the slightest bit about. And he’d never have taken me down into his basement, filled with all the wonderful things that the ministry doesn’t want him or anyone to have, and then offered me tea as he told me everything he’d never want to admit to anyone.”

 

Then, with a great fire in her eyes, she slammed her hand down on the table, forcing him to grab his cup of tea before it threatened to spill, “You’re sounding exactly like Sev! Severus has done terrible things, terrible things to me even, and yet he’s still my friend and there’s still a deep well of good in him. But if you ask him, he’ll never see it, always overlook it for something else, something darker and more abrasive. He only ever sees the worst of himself.”

 

Then leaning back, a too smug look on her face, she stated, “I know what you’re trying to do, you want me to run, you’re being deliberately unsympathetic thinking I’m going to walk back up those stairs and out of your life without even a glance back. Well, I’m not going to stand for it, Tom Riddle.”

 

There were no words.

 

Finally, after staring at her blankly like an idiot for far too long, he responded in the blandest tone he could muster, “I am unsympathetic. I’m a mudblood for the purebloods and the heir of Slytherin for the mudbloods. Nothing in me lends itself remotely to sympathy.”

 

However, Lily seemed unsympathetic to his plight as she slammed her hand down a second time and demanded, “Just tell me the rest of the damn story already and leave that for me to decide, you bastard!”

 

“Fair enough,” he responded coolly before launching back into his tale, “We left off in the Spring of 1943, after the death of the basilisk, and coincidentally enough this was when Azrael reappears in the tale with the death of Grindelwald and the disappearance and dissolution of his army, all performed by a wandless man in black.

 

The wizarding world itself was in shock over this but their eyes did not drift to the muggle world until later, when in that same year, the war came to a shuddering stop as a mysterious figure in black dismantled the great war machine for both axis and allies in what could only be described as an act of god.

 

But you see, Azrael had made the most of his absence from Hogwarts.

 

Singlehandedly he stopped the war, both wars, in their tracks from all angles. Dashing like mad across the continent, the world even, until there wasn’t a soldier left who wasn’t headed back to his homeland.

 

He returned to England for only one more summer, spent it at the orphanage with me, and for the moment it seemed as if we were in the eye of a hurricane, as my world became so terribly small and the greater world clambered for an explanation. By the end of the summer, several imposters had made an appearance, claiming his miracles as their miracles.

 

He could never stand for that.

 

And with a great reluctance, he crafted himself an abandoned empire, placing it in one of those places no one would ever think to look. And in 1945, after having made an appearance in 1943 with him as the head of this forgotten state, the great empire of Ubik was born.”

 

“Wait, wait!” Lily interjected, leaning back and staring at him, “Are you telling me that… That you were best friends with the emperor of Ubik? The ancient, Martian, emperor?! That he went to Hogwarts and… and…. And no one even knew?!”

 

“Well, no one really paid him much attention at the time,” Tom offered with a smile, “You’ve seen photographs, he’s rather unnerving, he was more unnerving dressed as a Hufflepuff. No one wanted to pay attention to him.”

 

“But then…” Lily raked a hand through her hair, “Then Ubik hasn’t existed for thousands of years or even hundreds, it’s only been around…”

 

“For a little over twenty years, yes,” Tom agreed, before adding sympathetically, “Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”

 

Certainly, at this point, Lily seemed speechless, even more speechless than she’d been when he’d confessed to liking men. Which, well, he supposed it showed that ultimately, she had prioritized her concerns in a respectable order. God emperors came before Tom’s sexual preference.

 

“Regardless,” Tom continued, “As you probably know there was a mass exodus from Europe. Many Jews immigrated, followed by Slavs and Poles, and any other refugee dubious of the west as the years went on. These days it’s almost unquestioned that the place you try first, if you try anywhere at all, is Ubik. There they formed a government, a council and a republic, with Azrael as far removed from any real authority as he could possibly get, and as more and more came the great city grew out of the terraformed alien world.

 

Returning to the young Tom Marvolo Riddle, I’d decided to try my hand in politics after all, to become an ambassador to Ubik and see what this great new world my friend had made could offer me. Only, this was easier said than done. The ministry dragged its feet, dismissing my letters and Ubik itself routinely for months, until finally, finally they realized that something must be done and that perhaps an ambassador was not a bad idea. However, I was denied the position in favor of Orion Black, your housemate Sirius’ father and my old Slytherin house mate.”

 

At Lily’s raised eyebrows he nodded and commented, “Yes, he’s exactly like what you’re picturing, Sirius Black, except spouting off about tradition and the dirty mudbloods instead of motorcycles and all things muggle.”

 

He paused, remembered that moment of standing in front of that desk, and said, “It was perhaps more disheartening than being denied permission to stay in Hogwarts during the Blitz.”

 

He sighed, waved the thought away, and continued before he could get off topic, “At any rate, we went to Mars, and soon enough, Orion had made an ass of himself and completely alienated us from the government and lost all chance for us to have any true sway with these people. I tried my best, but there was only so much I could do, and I began to show signs then of having… opinions. You see, Azrael had disregarded the Statute of Secrecy, had never truly believed in it, but on Mars had thrown it out altogether, and as he kept pushing and pushing the limits Orion, and the ministry, became more and more panicked and desperate.

 

It was a ticking time bomb.

 

That’s half the reason why I have such issues with the ministry, or rather, why they take such painful interest in me. I am one of two wizarding British men who have ever been to Ubik, and of the two who have been I am the only one who is not a lord…

 

As for me, I spent the years studying, it became less and less about politics and more a chance for me to research and refine my craft. And I was… content in that, I think I would have remained content in that, if I had been given the opportunity to do so. But life has ways of surprising us in the ways we least and most expect.”

 

He paused, not entirely sure how to convey this, never having had to convey it before, instead always having to deflect, but if he had told her so much already then he could hardly stop now, “I… There was a day, like any other, where suddenly, and without any real explanation, I… It felt like touching the face of God, or what that must feel like, for a singular instant I understood everything and… And in the aftermath, I found myself immortal, well, in a great fever for weeks on end, but none the less altered forever.

 

I haven’t really changed since then.

 

That was where the real trouble began, my disappearance, Azrael found me and took care of me in the following weeks, there was no word to Orion Black. Then it compounded so quickly… With both Azrael and Black.

 

I confessed, there, on what felt like my deathbed, I told Azrael how I felt about him, still after all of those years, and received a swift and utter rejection, and returning back to my quarters on the edge of the city, dejected and utterly humiliated, I found Orion Black waiting for me, saying that he would overlook my absence provided I do something for him.

 

Having reached another undeniably low point in my life, the threat of Azkaban hanging over my head, without too much thought to what he wanted and the consequences, I agreed.”

 

He eyed the tea in his hands, then Lily, and motioned to the room around them, “The reason,” he stated, “That we have this endless embargo with Ubik, that the ministry jumps at every shadow with the mere mention of its name, is not because of what they have done to us but because of what we did to them. Orion Black, with the blessing of the Wizengamot and the Minister of Magic, tried to detonate a series of wards, using the runes I crafted on his behalf, to destroy a newly built magical school in the city, regardless of whoever might be inside.

 

It didn’t work, Azrael had always been better than me and Orion should have bloody known better… All the same, when I found out, I almost killed Black. I was so very, very, close to wiping him off the face of that red planet forever. If Azrael hadn’t shown up in that moment, with my wand pointed at Black’s throat, and banished both of us back to England, then likely your friend Sirius Black would never have come into existence in the first place.

 

As it was, that was the last time I saw Azrael…”

 

He felt tired then, so very tired, far too tired to go into the details of what Ubik had looked like in the dead of winter or the height of summer, the great city made of lights, or even that final day and the look in his eyes as Black stared back at him fear and such contempt. Or the emperor’s eyes, when he’d looked at Tom in utter dismissal, and banished him from Mars for over twenty years.

 

But it wouldn’t be any more, now, now he’d suddenly reappeared and (and Tom didn’t have time to bother with that now).

 

Sighing, rubbing a hand over his eyes, he summed it all up, “In the end I appeared on Minerva’s doorstep, later attempted to get the Defense position at Hogwarts but was offered the consolation prize of Muggle Studies, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

 

And how could it seem so very long and short both at once?

 

Still rubbing a hand over his eyes, slumped in his chair, he asked, “Do you have any questions?”

 

“Any questions?” Lily asked, almost dumbly, before stating, “You just dumped your entire life, your entire bizarre life, onto me, and you ask me if I have any questions.”

 

“It seemed best to get it over with all at once,” Tom said with a sigh, flopping his hand down to dangle from the armrest, and offered her his exhausted stare, “And besides, now you know, and know what a terrible idea it really is to date me.”

 

“Oh, that is…” Lily stopped, started, “Is that what you thought would happen after all of this?!”

 

“I just confessed to murder, framing an innocent student, attempted murder on several more accounts, deep Martian associations to an absurd degree, and the fact that the government probably has jar in the department of mysteries with my name on it.” Tom stated blandly and bluntly, before adding, “Likely, I’m going to have to leave England entirely one of these days, once my youthful features become too ridiculous for anyone to accept anymore, or when they finally round up all those a little too close to Ubik… There are consequences, to dating me, seriously dating me, Lily, large consequences that you have no comprehension of.”

 

Then, shortly, echoing Azrael on Mars almost bitterly, “I have baggage, so much baggage that my baggage even has baggage.”

 

He considered her for a moment, all red hair and still growing limbs, just exiting adolescence, entirely too young and unscarred by life for him, and said, “Date Severus Snape. You’ve been friends for years, he’s actually your age, you seem to like the brooders, and for all that he’s slighted you, he’s done nothing even close to what I have yet, and he loves you. If you have any sense at all, Lily, you would choose Severus Snape, or anyone else for that matter.”

 

For a moment she said nothing, then a small smile, and, “Don’t you know? I’m a Gryffindor, we’re notorious for having no bloody sense at all.”

 

He blinked, once again, taken aback by this strange and all at once exasperating young woman.

 

She stared off, past him at the walls and the runes dripping down, eternity stretching inside each and every one of them, “There’s still a lot to think about, I know, and I still have questions later, and you’re right, your baggage does have excessive baggage… And there’s so much in your life that I don’t think I can ever really get over, or forgive you for, but I never met that Tom Riddle. I’ve only met this one, and I know who he is, and I know how I feel about him.”

 

She stood, wandered nonchalantly over to his shelf, while he could only watch with such a stupid expression, and with a small smile pulled down a book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” down from the shelf.

 

“Would you mind if I read this down here for a little while, Tom?” she asked, “After all, before now, I’d never had the chance.”


	32. Chapter 32

What does one do after making their peace with God?

 

In Tom’s case, he got up the next morning to the sight of summer light seeping through his blinds, sat up on his bed, and stared blankly at his bare wall for a good half hour, thinking that he could have timed his confession better, if he’d done it during the school year, at least, then he’d at least have classes to occupy his time.

 

Instead he sat there, in the utter silence, waiting for… something.

 

The trouble was that it had been so… anticlimactic. Granted, it was better than the last time he’d confessed any of his true feelings to anyone, that being on Mars to an emperor and him ultimately getting deported and banished. All the same, she’d just sat there reading through his science fiction book, not even looking at him and then, after she’d finished it, had looked up and said something along the lines of, “If I’m not going to stay the night then I should probably be headed home.”

 

Like there was even a remote possibility that she’d be ‘staying the night’, one which had basically left him staring at her like a halfwit, until he’d just thrown her out of his house and back onto the now dark streets of Hogsmeade, slamming the door in her face as she asked something along the lines of, “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

 

He did not have the energy to deal with that, or to explain the almost embarrassing fact that he was, well, a virgin and that no one had ever in any capacity ‘stayed the night’. Although, she probably knew, given that he was fairly sure that had been covered in his extensive history of Tom Riddle.

 

“Honestly,” he said to himself, “What’s wrong with that girl?”

 

Because even as he forced himself to his feet, began making breakfast and tea, and went through all the routines of his morning that thought consumed him. There had to be something incredibly wrong with Lily Evans, something he’d somehow missed all these years, but now was making itself more than clear.

 

Now, he didn’t know precisely what that thing was, but all the same, there was a glaring something that prevented her from acting… well, like a normal human being.

 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he groused to himself, scoffing at the end of it even as the kettle began to shriek and he poured himself a well needed cup of tea.

 

Never mind, Tom, that you set loose a basilisk in the school for nihilist shits and giggles and framed my favorite half-giant groundskeeper for the death, or that you confessed to being homosexual, sort of, or that you are probably the first one to be imprisoned whenever this Ubik issue gets a little too hot. None of that matters, I’ll just see you tomorrow, like none of this ever happened.

 

What would Tom have done, if someone had confessed something like that to him? Certainly, he wouldn’t have smiled, nodded, and gone about his business and…

 

Suddenly, he was struck by the memory of Azrael telling Tom that he was Death and previously witnessed the end of civilization and that he had also been married. Of those things, somehow, it was the marriage that Tom had reacted the most violently too.

 

“Clearly,” he muttered to himself as he moved towards the table, taking a copy of The Prophet with him, “I am a terrible example.”

 

Well, tomorrow was now today, and today then would tell if Lily Evans possessed any rational bone in her body or if she was going to stand by her Gryffindor guns. Tom, for his own part, had no idea what to expect from her.

 

Instead, with a sigh he opened The Prophet, and there, on the front page, the attack on Diagon Alley. The details were sparse, if only because there were few details to be had. A local, new shop, which catered to muggle curiosities and knickknacks, had been burnt to the ground. Tom knew of it, the owners had reached out to him on a regular basis since their opening, he’d never had the heart to tell them he found their store grossly insulting and demeaning what with their wares of magical toasters. It had been run by a first-generation pureblood couple, whose parents had both been muggleborn…

 

The detail that “Death to Blood Traitors” had been written in the sky had been left in a rather spare comment towards the bottom of the article. An inexcusable act of violence, it was called instead, as if this very act hadn’t been coming for decades.

 

The culprits, it was stated, had been found and dealt with by the proper authorities. However, whether this was a slap on the wrist of some pureblood lord as he shuffled his disobedient son out of the holding cell, well, that wasn’t elaborated upon.

 

All the same, if the culprits had been dealt with, in whatever capacity the ministry was ever capable of dealing with anyone, it meant that Tom, at least, would not be dealt with today. And that was fine by him.

 

“Oh, what an age to be alive,” he said to himself with a small rather self-deprecating smile.

 

What an age indeed… Maybe those old resentments, so prevalent even when Tom had gone to Hogwarts, were finally boiling over. His eyes drifted to the NEWT and OWL exams for Muggle Studies, still resting on the table where he’d abandoned them the day before, that, at least, was something that still needed to get done.

 

Before he could start flipping through again there was insistent, familiar, knocking on his front door. For a moment he continued to sit dumbly, certain he’d hallucinated it, because surely after a good night’s sleep and thinking it over she’d realize how insane it was to…

 

The knocking continued, somehow, impossibly, louder than before.

 

And there, opening the door, was none other than Lily Evans with an insistently stubborn look on her face as she stood on her doorstep in another brightly colored outfit to compliment the mild summer morning.

 

Naturally, the first thing out of Tom’s mouth was, “What is wrong with you?”

 

She gave him a somewhat confused and flustered look, probably expecting something along the lines of ‘hello, how are you’ or ‘nice weather we’re having, eh?’, “What?”

 

“Why are you here?” Tom asked, motioning to their surrounding then back to her, as if to show how much they contradicted each other. Well, not Hogsmeade, honestly it was Tom that clashed with the constant holiday décor of Hogsmeade, but either way the point was abundantly clear.

 

“Can I come in?” Lily asked, crossing her arms, and giving him a look as if she dared him to kick her out. He was very tempted to say no and slam the door just because of that, but, with a sigh, he ushered her inside.

 

“Please, make yourself at home,” he groused out, not really feeling in the mood to be polite of all things but Lily didn’t seem to mind, given the fact that she didn’t seem to mind anything this perhaps shouldn’t have been surprising.

 

However, instead of making herself at home, she moved to the center of the house, to the carpet and his trap door to the basement, making it all too clear what she was expecting. With an unamused look he opened it up and ushered her inside and set up a table and chairs once again.

 

Then, once they were both seated, he asked again, “Why are you here?”

 

“I told you yesterday, I haven’t changed my mind,” she said, before, with the kind of look that would have a lesser man flinching she declared, “I wanted to talk.”

 

“About Hagrid?” he asked, after all, if anything that should be the blatant reminder to her that Tom was not all that he seemed, it was summer now, but soon every day she’d have to see that man and think of the life he could have had, if only he hadn’t been framed for manslaughter.

 

Minerva, after all, had never truly been able to look Hagrid in the face since 1943.

 

“No,” Lily said, and it was a surprisingly definite no, as if she truly had thought about it but had decided against ever asking him.

 

“Is it about Diagon Alley, yesterday?” he paused as he considered her, her staring down at the table and her interlaced hands, looking so very young, and then he reiterated, “That one, at least, I have no hand in, I no longer find such causes appealing.”

 

“No, it’s not about that,” Lily said, shaking her head, but not offering any alternative either.

 

Leaving him to just sigh and feel so much older than he looked, and say, “Well then, Lily, what is this about?”

 

“I just… I just wanted to talk,” she paused, took a breath, “You said a lot yesterday, a lot, and most of it was honestly terrible.”

 

“I am a terrible person, it’s to be expected,” Tom interjected, Ollivander, after all, had told him as much.

 

Lily, still glaring, appeared to appreciate none of his interjection and instead went on to passionately say, “Most of it, any normal person would never forgive you for, that honestly I shouldn’t forgive you for either but… But I realized that we’ve never really talked. Well, we have but, but there was always some wall between us one that apparently was made up of war, Martians, and murder. But I realized that I apparently now know all the bad but I… I don’t really know any of the good either. Or, I do, but nothing you’ve told me, just what I see every day.”

 

There were no words, only his mouth slightly open in shock, and the confused demand of, “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

 

“I,” Lily said, pointing at him with an accusing finger, “Think I am talking to Tom Marvolo Riddle, I know who I’m talking to, I just want to know more about him.”

“There’s not much else to say,” Tom said with a sort of blank look, “Honestly, that was… Well, it, not much else to it.”

 

“That can’t be right,” Lily responded and then with an unamused look, “Think harder.”

 

He considered this for a few moments, and finally, dully, settled on, “I am very smart.”

 

Lily, predictably, was even less amused by this than Minerva would have been.

 

“I’m also very pretty,” Tom added, cradling his jaw in one hand as he leaned across the table, giving her something of a sultry look, “I hear I’m a hit with all the underage Hogwarts ladies.”

 

Lily whacked him lightly with the back of her hand against his face, “Stop it, you know that’s not what I meant.”

 

Tom however, for the first time in days, was on something of a roll as he now inspected his fingernails even as a smug smile crept across his lips, “I also have superb handwriting, I enunciate as well as any premier thespian, I have read a lot of books, I have marginally better fashion sense than Albus Dumbledore…”

 

Lily held up her hands in surrender, cutting him off, “Alright, alright, how about this, did you really not research who your parents were, your family, because… Because you thought you’d be disappointed by them?”

 

“Strange,” Tom commented, pretending to muse over this point, “That doesn’t sound like a compliment about myself…”

 

“Stop it, I’m being serious,” Lily said, “I… You said you’re an orphan, surely, you want to know where you come from.”

 

“I know where I came from,” Tom scoffed, suddenly far less amused by all of this, “Remember, my mother walked in from the gutter.”

 

Lily shook her head in despair, crying out as if to implore him, “That doesn’t mean she came from London, and what about your father, what about your other relatives? You must have relatives who live in the wizarding world even, and who knows, maybe they’ve been looking for you!”

 

“Well, they haven’t tried very hard, have they?” he asked, throwing his own hands into the air, “I haven’t been hiding, you know, I’ve been here all this time, and my mother even had the decency to name me after my father. They’ve had plenty of opportunities to seek me out and…”

 

Lily interrupted him face growing red as she too began to gesture wildly, “And maybe they can’t, maybe they didn’t know about your father, maybe it was your mother’s side that was magical and she never told them…”

 

“And she chose to give birth on the floor of a muggle orphanage?!” he balked and then, his voice rose, as that dreaded possibility that he had never considered before reared its head, “She chose to die, even as she was giving birth to a son, she chose to die?!”

 

Lily paled, as no doubt the implications of her suggestion kicked in, the idea that, had his mother been the heir of Slytherin, then she could have had the decency to go to St. Mungos, “I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that, I…”

 

“It’s alright,” he said, almost whispering the words, “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

 

“Doesn’t it?”

 

He smiled at her then, she cared about this idea of his lineage, or rather, of his hypothetical family, far more than he did. When Albus Dumbledore, had known all those years ago, that it hadn’t mattered in the slightest.

 

“No, it doesn’t.”

 

There was a strained silence between them for a moment, as Tom moodily considered his own lineage, and Lily considered his indifference to it.

 

Finally, with a sigh, and a small, softer, smile, Lily asked, “What about Ubik?”

 

“What about Ubik?” Tom shot back at her with a raised eyebrow.

 

“Well, you’ve been there, more, you know the emperor, or… knew… I suppose… Either way you probably know more about Ubik than anyone on Earth or Mars. What’s it like? Who lives there? What does it look like what does…”

 

He cut her off before the spark in her eyes could become too bright to contain, “Don’t look into Ubik.”

 

“I’m sorry?” she asked, blinking, smile dimming someone.

 

He repeated himself, eyes burning into hers, making his words perfectly clear, “Don’t look into Ubik.”

 

Now she frowned, began to look somewhat irritated, “Why not?”

 

“Lily, these are not the best of times, things are finally bubbling over,” Tom said, reached out to grab one of her hands in his, “Maybe yesterday was a one-off event, but maybe not… If the ministry catches you showing an interest in Ubik, as a muggleborn, you’ll find yourself on some sort of list, either as someone to keep an eye on or a potential spy. Because, if this gets worse Lily, then a brain drain will come, and if any of those bureaucrats have any sort of sense they’ll feel it like an itch even now.”

 

“Brain drain?” Lily asked, looking completely unfamiliar with the term, which was perhaps to be expected, it was muggle in origin after all.

 

“The fleeing of intellectuals and educated human resources from a country,” Tom explained with a rather crooked smile, “It has happened numerous times, and many of those times, since the end of the second world war, it has been to Ubik. The Jews, the Slavs, the Soviets, the Chinese, the Cubans, name a country and a revolution… Ubik, they say, makes it a sport of poaching professors.”

 

With a sigh he then expanded, motioning with one pale hand, “There are already signs of it here. A few years before you went to Hogwarts we had a student who, after an initial acceptance into Hogwarts, had a run in with a pureblood in the streets. He then told us that he’d rather attend Ubik’s magical school. Since then Minerva’s tours of Diagon Alley have been a little more… censored. It’s not until the kids get into Hogwarts, and it’s too late, that they learn what they signed up for.”

 

And then they made it a point to make sure it was clear that Mars was not an option of any kind, that any Englishman who set foot on that land could consider himself a defector and a lost cause, that only England would remain for the mudblood English.

 

No matter how few opportunities were afforded to them in their home country.

 

“There are also the quieter defections, those that come of older muggleborns who, upon graduating Hogwarts discover the disadvantages that had been brushed under the carpet during their schoolyears, and find that anything tying them to Wizarding Britain is superficial at best,” Tom added, lacing his hands together and offering Lily a somewhat sad smile, “If yesterday is just the beginning, then I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a mass exodus. And that, if the ministry has any sense at all, will make them very nervous.”

 

“What about you?” Lily asked, “You said you might leave if…”

 

“Well, I’m a little different,” Tom said with a small self-derisive smile, “It’s not the violence that will drive me out, if they start rounding up people with connections to Ubik, that’s when I’ll be in trouble, and I will have to move very quickly… As for where I’ll go, well, that’s anyone’s guess. My invitation to Ubik is a bit up in the air…”

 

He trailed off, realizing that this wasn’t true anymore, strictly speaking, he’d spoken with Azrael, and he’d said, he’d offered a hand out to Tom, Tom could go back…

 

“Have you talked to him since then?” Lily asked, of course meaning Azrael of all people.

 

“Surprisingly, yes,” Tom said, and he did, feel surprised that was, as if that one fact really hadn’t sunk in yet, “Yesterday, actually, while you met with Snape… He said I should stop dating you so that you could get on dating James Potter.”

 

Lily, had she been drinking tea at that moment, likely would have choked. As it was her face grew pale and then purple, “What?!”

 

“It was a very surreal conversation,” Tom said with a growing smile even as Lily flushed and tore at her red hair in utter confusion and embarrassment.

 

“But I… How does he even know who I am?! And James Potter?! What… I just…”

 

“I have no idea how he knows you, honestly, he’s always been very mysterious,” Tom said with a sigh, before adding, “I was more concerned that he’d shown up after a twenty-year absence and the first words out of his mouth were about my love life.”

“But… But James Potter?!” Lily gave a wordless noise of frustration and horror as she contemplated the possibility of her marriage to James Potter, “The emperor of Ubik wants me to date James Potter?! Did you… You told him I would never, right?!”

 

“Oh, of course, it was the first thing out of my mouth,” Tom reassured her, because strangely, she did need reassuring from this.

 

Lily gave a great sigh of relief, slumped in her chair, then said, “Wait a minute, you’re not… this isn’t a joke, is it?”

 

“No, that really happened,” Tom said, before, at her raised eyebrows explaining, “My life is delectably surreal upon occasion.”

 

“Right,” Lily said, almost stunned, and then declared, “We should go on a real date.”

 

“What?” Tom asked.

 

“Well, we never really called them dates, before, but now that we’ve done all of these confessions and since yesterday… happened, we should go on a real date.” Lily seemed to gain more confidence as she said this, rising back to her normal position in the chair, and smiling at him.

 

A date, what on earth could they do though? Tom considered this, then half-heartedly confessed, “Well, I do still have those NEWT and OWL exams to take care of, if you really are that interested in seeing me terrify bureaucrats.”

 

She grinned across from him, took his hand in hers and squeezed it tightly, “It’s a date!”

 

* * *

 

The summer continued, and as Tom had thought, that first act of arson was not the last, though it was perhaps one of the grandest. On the corners of Knockturn and Diagon Alley former Hogwarts students, handed out fliers, protesting the peeling away of tradition by a bureaucracy that catered to the mudbloods. And when they saw Tom walk by, sometimes arm in arm with Lily Evans, they spit at his feet.

 

Rumor had it, in the manors of the pureblood lords, meetings were being held, and there were great rallies in private quidditch pitches.

 

And every time The Prophet declared the culprits caught and dealt with accordingly, never daring to give a photograph of the perpetrators, or their slogan of “Death to blood traitors” emblazoned in glowing red letters at every crime scene.

 

Meanwhile, the Ministry regretted to inform Tom that the changes he proposed to the NEWT and OWL examinations were not appropriate, and that the exam would continue to be written by the ministry’s own muggle affairs staff.

 

Though, they thanked him, as always, for his contribution to the effort to understand muggle culture.

 

* * *

 

It had to happen eventually, if only because the school year was creeping closer and someone was bound to notice… That, and, he’d run into one of those Prophet reporters who would have had a dazzling career in a tabloid paper, while out and about with Lily, and, well, he wouldn’t be surprised if, in the next week or so, in some dark corner of the paper there’d be his picture along with, “Muggle Studies Professor on Date with Barely Legal Former Student”.

 

(And if they wanted to distract the public from the growing anti-muggleborn sentiment, useless gossip about that Muggle Studies professor no one liked would be an excellent strategy.)

 

That, and he wasn’t ashamed, necessarily. No, not ashamed at all, however, as it was he always kept an instinctive eye out whenever Lily dragged him anywhere just… well… because.

 

He didn’t need that kind of a reputation.

 

Though he was inevitably going to get that kind of a reputation, and Lily herself didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

 

At any rate, he had finally, after a few months, the summer winding down, decided to come clean to Minerva. He invited her into his office, poured scotch into two glasses handing one to her and ignoring the dubious raising of her eyebrows, and said, “Congratulations, Minerva, you were right, I am dating Lily Evans.”

 

For a moment she just looked at him, wide eyed, and then came the pity, “Oh, Tom…”

 

“I know, I know, I am a creepy old man, I know, and you were right, the whole time, and now is your chance to gloat. So, revel in it, Minerva, go ahead and gloat,” Tom said, taking a drink himself and shuddering at the taste, not that alcohol really did much for him anymore, not since the whole Martian fiasco.

 

“Tom she’s…”

 

“Nineteen now,” Tom interjected, as he had kept very close track of that, “Not quite as sordid as eighteen.”

 

Minerva seemed suitably unimpressed by this, setting down her drink upon his desk with enough force to make the scotch spill out from over the edge, forcing Tom to surreptitiously and windlessly clean it, “Tom, that hardly makes it better! You’re decades older than her!”

 

“Well, it appears Lily Evans has a thing for older men,” Tom drawled with a hapless shrug, as if there was nothing he could really do about it, which, he couldn’t, he had after all given some effort in trying to convince her Severus Snape was the better choice.

 

“No, Tom, it appears that you have a thing for younger women!” Minerva accused, finger pointing directly at his chest.

 

“That’s less weird,” Tom responded, and technically, when it was two people in his entire life that was hardly enough to define a type.

 

“It doesn’t change the fact that you’re too old for her!”

 

“Yes, well, I told her that, she didn’t seem inclined to listen,” Tom said, and it was true, he’d told her that and more, “So, now we’re dating.”

 

Minerva muttered some Scottish curse or another, picked her drink back up, and swallowed, grimacing, “Tom, you are a scoundrel.”

 

“I try,” Tom replied blandly.

 

“You’re going to cause something of a scandal, you know that, don’t you?”

 

“Minerva, I am the Muggle Studies professor, I am a scandal,” Tom said motioning to himself, to his suit, and perhaps even past that to his own rather checkered past. Granted, he’d never been a scandal featured in a newspaper before.

 

“I hope you don’t expect me to be giving you my blessing,” Minerva said with a rather offended sniff.

 

“I wouldn’t dream of it, I just thought you should know, and have your opportunity to rub it in my face,” Tom said with a small smile, one that Minerva seemed to dubiously accept.

 

“You know, I always thought that she and James Potter would have gone well together,” Minerva commented then, flooring Tom completely.

 

“James Potter?” he really shouldn’t be surprised, Minerva had a strange fondness for James Potter and his fellow hellions along with the rest of the staff, somehow overlooking the fact that they were a bunch of teenaged assholes and always had been.

 

What was even stranger was that Minerva and Azrael were of the same bizarre matchmaking opinion, now that, Tom wouldn’t have seen coming.

 

“Oh, he’s been after her for years,” Minerva said, “And he’s a good boy even if he was a little rambunctious.”

 

“Rambunctious is not the word I would have used,” Tom said blandly, “And you can rest assured that, even had Lily decided not to date me, that would never happen.”

 

“He, at least, is her age,” Minerva said accusingly.

 

“Well, full steam ahead then, I’ll have to tell Lily to dump me like the damaged goods I am and hop on board the Potter express,” although he already had, somewhat, given that he’d told her that the emperor of Ubik demanded Tom leave her alone so that she could date James Potter as she was destined to.

 

“You, are impossible to talk to,” Minerva said, taking another drink, “And it is just like you to provide hard liquor for this sort of thing.”

 

“I thought it best to be prepared,” Tom said before breathing out a sigh, “So, now you know… Yes…”

 

It seemed that neither of them had much to say after that, as they stared at one another, waiting for the other to speak. Eventually, it was Minerva who interrupted the silence, saying, “So, other than that, how are the preparations for your classes coming along?”

 

* * *

 

It seemed like every week Lily was down in his basement. Perhaps he had become desensitized in his old age, but he just didn’t see the fascination with his collection of banned materials, Lily, however, seemed to be of an entirely different opinion.

 

However, the summer was drawing to a close, and with the start of the school year he, and consequently she, would be down here much less. As a result, this was probably the last she’d see of this place for a good six months.

 

“Now, why was this one banned?” Lily asked, holding up one of his older science fiction short story collections right under his nose, sitting close enough to him on a conjured sofa so that she was practically on top of him.

 

“This one, it wasn’t,” Tom said, taking the book from her and flipping through it before handing it back, “But I suspected it would be shortly and didn’t feel the need to have it on display for anyone to see.”

 

“Huh, so how many of these are actually banned versus you being paranoid?” Lily asked, motioning to their surroundings, ignoring Tom’s slight grimace at that phrasing.

 

It wasn’t paranoid if Tom had a very good reason to be doing this.

 

“Well, if it has the word Mars in it, then you can bet that it’s been banned by somebody regardless of if it has anything to do with Ubik. Similarly, if it’s actually about Ubik and hasn’t come from a Ministry approved source, then it’s down here for a reason as well,” Tom said with a shrug, there was a definitive list that Tom paid close attention to, but honestly, most of his collection was down here for a reason.

 

They fell into silence, Tom, flipping through his own books, brushing up on Arthur’s selected material for the advanced course he wanted to teach (that they would be lucky if they even got one student for), while Lily continued to read.

 

However, apparently the quiet was more strained than he thought, because about half a chapter in Lily’s somewhat hesitant voice interrupted his thoughts, “Tom, I… I wanted to let you know that, well, since the start of summer I… I looked into your family.”

 

Tom set his book down and looked up to find Lily looking at him with an almost apologetic expression, “I… I know, you said you didn’t want to know and I… I understand why but I just thought that maybe…”

 

She trailed off and grimaced, looking away from him, “Anyway, I looked into it, when I wasn’t with you I mean, went back to your orphanage, tracked down both sides of your family actually…”

 

“The orphanage?” Tom asked, eyebrows raising, “Surely everyone I knew from there is dead.”

 

“Oh, Mrs. Cole was and… well, I think everyone else who would have known you left but there were some records left and… You didn’t tell me you ran away,” Lily said.

 

“Ran away? Oh, I guess I did,” Tom said, frowning as he reflected back to his later Hogwarts years and just what the hell he’d been doing, “I spent that last summer on Mars instead… I honestly forgot about that.”

 

“Right but I… I thought I should let you know that I met them, I mean, at least some of your relatives anyways, from both sides. Not your parents obviously or even their parents but, you have a few cousins…” Lily then grimaced again, “I just thought that you should know.”

 

Inside of that, he thought, was an unstated warning to be careful what he wished for, so, instead, he asked, “Were they awful?”

 

Her lack of answer told him more than enough.

 

“Well, thank you, I suppose, for looking into it,” Tom said with a small and what he hoped was a rather reassuring smile, “Although, please, try to restrain yourself next time.”

 

However, this appeared to make Lily feel worse as she exclaimed, “I’m so sorry! I… I just thought…”

 

“Oh,” Tom said dimly, “They were that bad.”

 

Apparently, they were, as Lily struggled to get herself together after he said this, “I hate to say this, but, honestly, I almost didn’t want to tell you at all. I’ve actually been putting it off for weeks but it’s your family and I just… They just… It’s probably best you don’t meet them, Tom.”

 

“Well, I always knew I came from trash,” Tom said with a small shrug, “But it’s nice to have it confirmed, even if I do never see it for myself.”

 

“You were right though, it doesn’t matter where you came from, I don’t… I don’t care,” Lily said with a rather dazzling smile up at him.

 

Brushing a stray hair back behind her ear he responded, “It’d be better for you, I think, if you did.”

 

But he didn’t mind nearly as much as a better man would have, no, he was fine with things the way they were. Even if there was a picture of him in the Prophet, even if purebloods spat at him in the streets, even if he was never truly respected ever again.

 

There was a sense of calm, perhaps even of serenity, in this one summer that he was more than fine with.

 

* * *

 

At the start of the school year, a week or so after classes had begun, The Daily Prophet’s front-page article detailed Sirius Black’s, disowned former heir of the house of Black’s, gruesome death by poisoning.


	33. Chapter 33

(“Aurors are proficient to a point in Potions.”

 

“They brew their own, they can recognize one if they find it, but only to a point. They’re far from being Potions Masters and sometimes they’ll need something that’s beyond their capability of brewing.”

 

“What are you saying?”

 

“Sirius Black will never go to Azkaban for what he did. He is a Black, a disowned Black, but still a Black, his best friend will one day be Lord Potter, and you will never have any political weight. If you want revenge then you will need to live, you will need to study, and you will need to become a Potions Master. Because one day Sirius Black will need a potion he can’t refuse and you must be in a position to give it to him.”)

 

* * *

 

Poison, even the muggle variety, was never a clean death. How could it be when by its very nature it shut the body down or else turned it against itself so that those trusted organs faltered or else did something which they hadn’t been intended to do in the first place.

 

Death by poisoning, even the subtle, undetected variety, was a nasty way to go.

 

Sirius Black’s death had been neither subtle nor muggle, and that, in itself, was shown by the lack of photograph of the boy in the article. Instead it was a healthier Sirius Black, in a newly minted aurors uniform with one arm slung around James Potter’s shoulders, that was displayed on the front page. A nineteen-year-old boy in the prime of his life with his whole career ahead of him.

 

If only his potions labels hadn’t tragically, and perhaps purposefully, been switched at some point. So, what should have been a perfectly harmless dose of pepper up potion turned into… Well, something quite different.

 

What a strange coincidence, that the potion that should have been a pepper up, had the same consistency and color. Stranger, that this was a potion rarely studied outside of apprenticeships and academia, a strange finicky potion that took weeks to brew, that had little use outside of being a lethal poison. Accidentally and tragically mixed in with the batches of regular pepper up potions that were supplied to aurors, or, perhaps, done more purposefully than that.

 

Tom glanced up over his paper, eyes darting down the staff table and then wandering over the students. The staff were grim, as was natural, Sirius had so recently been a student and while a pain in their collective asses he had been charismatic and promising, a breath of fresh air in the house of Black that hadn’t been seen since the disinherited Alphard.

 

The boy, in his own way, had been beloved by almost every staff member.

 

Everyone was staring at Regulus Black, now a seventh-year student and heir to his house in his brother’s place, watching as he picked at his food with tired eyes, likely he had been instructed to pretend that Sirius had been dead already.

 

Now that he was well and truly dead, well, to his mother’s eyes there should be no true difference.

 

There was an unspoken grief, shock, and tension among each of them, one that prevented even whispering gossip. It seemed that even those who had just entered Hogwarts, who had never gotten the chance to know Sirius Black, James Potter, Remus Lupin, or any of the four legendary Gryffindor gang knew the weight of this moment.

 

Down the table, seated next to Horace Slughorn, Lily stared at the paper in dumb horror, her eyes locked on the photograph, on Sirius grinning and waving towards her silently in black and white moving pixels.

 

Tom sat perfectly still, seeing past the words, past that small little line of an ongoing investigation into the man’s death…

 

And instead into a conversation he’d had years ago now, with the young, bitter, Severus Snape who seemed to have absolutely nothing to live for save his own hatred of James Potter and, even more so, Sirius Black.

 

And Tom felt… Nothing.

 

He took an experimental bite of his toast, the only one in the hall that seemed to be capable of consuming anything (no matter how mechanical and painful Regulus’ forced chewing was), and still felt more or less indifferent.

 

Perhaps even a bit vindictively pleased, like he’d been waiting for this for some time without even realizing it and was only just now seeing the fruits of his own minimal labor. Like he really had distantly wanted Severus Snape to go ahead and do it, not simply a speech as a desperate means to persuade him from drastic measures like suicide, to see what would happen.

 

He wondered if that should surprise him, or if it shouldn’t surprise him, or if he was supposed to feel anything but vaguely indifferent to the prospect of Orion Black’s dead son and his disintegrating house.

 

Every time he looked at Sirius Black’s face he could only ever see his father, his father that last day on Mars, and that moment where Tom almost hadn’t spared his life. Wouldn’t have spared his life if Azrael hadn’t chosen to appear at the exact moment he needed to. There was the strange thought that perhaps this was coming full circle, that perhaps, perhaps Severus Snape in being goaded by Tom had finished what they’d started all those years ago in Ubik.

 

Perhaps both he and Orion Black were still standing in the shadow of Mars, the dust of the dried canals still shifting beneath their feet, forever and always.

 

Because if Tom had acted then neither Sirius nor Regulus Black would have ever existed in the first place.

 

And that… That wasn’t a possibility that disheartened Tom.

 

He wanted to sigh, he didn’t, he just stared at the paper, his mind whirling over what would happen now, because it seemed that something must happen now in a way that nothing had happened for Myrtle when she had died on Hogwarts grounds no less (and there was something nasty and bitter and cold to be said for that, for the death of a student that could be brushed under a rug and the death of an alumni that couldn’t be).

 

Albus would make a speech soon, perhaps now, when he was done clearing his throat and blinking away the mist from his eyes. The man had always been uncharacteristically soft for those students he’d liked. Had Tom died a gruesome death he probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. Hell, he’d barely batted an eyelash for Myrtle and he’d seen her dead body firsthand.

 

There’d likely be a funeral, arranged by James Potter no doubt as Sirius had been disowned, it’d likely be on Hogwarts grounds with all faculty and current students invited along with close friends. Tom would have to attend, would stand beside Lily, try not to wince as James Potter and everyone else looked over at him with his hand on her shoulder or else his hand in hers and accused.

 

They’d wear black for a week, maybe two, maybe four. Tom would wear black for as long as Minerva wore black, somehow it made no difference to him, he tended to wear darker suits already.

 

Tom would have to say something during his classes, a brief, unsatisfactory speech that would likely equate to, ‘death happens’, and then force them to somehow maintain their focus on the cold war and how it shaped even the wizarding world.

 

There’d be an investigation, there’d be a trial…

 

He flipped through the rest of the paper, almost mechanically, and couldn’t help but note, that with the death of Sirius Black taking up the page, along with the recent violence in the streets, no one had thought to comment on the scandalous lecherous muggle studies professor’s relationship with young Lily Evans.

 

Priorities were a terribly damning thing sometimes.

  

* * *

 

Naturally, within the first few days with the investigation still ongoing (lead by newly minted auror captain James Potter of all people) it seemed like everyone singled out Tom to talk to. Well, everyone being Arthur, Minerva, Lily, and a good chunk of his students and a decent chunk that hadn’t set foot inside of his classroom.

 

God only knew why, maybe it was because Tom appeared to be handling it all so calmly compared to the rest of them. Really, you’d think that Tom was the only one who knew how to work at all when somebody died. Or, maybe, probably, it was because Minerva always vented to Tom and always had, Arthur was in his immediate proximity, Lily was being… Lily, and the rest he could blame on his strange reputation as muggle studies professor and pin-up girl.

 

Well, pin-up man… Although the fact that Filch actually had confiscated, more than once, pin-up posters of an entirely too sultry Tom Riddle (more than likely created and sold off by the self-proclaimed marauders in question) was really more disturbing than Tom liked to contemplate.

 

Tom preferred to think of himself as terrifying, he didn’t like the idea that his terrifying glare somehow, along with his face, translated to sex appeal for twelve-year-old girls.

 

“It’s just… I feel like I just saw him,” Arthur said, taking off his ridiculous top hat for once in his life as he stared dully at the stack of history books littering Tom’s office, “Like… He was just here, and I was just here and now I’ll never see him again. I mean, I won’t say we were particularly close, we weren’t, I mean we were house mates and all but… It’s just so strange and sad that I’ll never see him again.”

 

“It does put things into perspective, doesn’t it?” Tom asked if only because it seemed like the thing to ask or say. Apparently, he was right, as Arthur let out a forced, bitter, laugh.

 

“Right, I guess it shows how… temporary, everything really is. And, and how none of us can really take anything for granted at all.”

 

Minerva was a bit less poetic, she waxed nostalgia about the four of her students, about their friendship, and about how secretly along with James and Lily, Sirius would always be one of her favorites.

 

“He had such potential, not just as a student, but a potential for good, for Britain,” Minerva said, “And the strength and courage to stand up to his own family, to turn his back on them… He would have been wonderful, Tom.”

 

Talking to Lily over the weekend, taking a small break while they could back to his house and the basement, was in many ways a thousand times easier. If only because Lily already knew exactly what he was and there was no reason to hide it.

 

He had forgotten how… refreshing, how necessary, that was.

 

Only Azrael had ever… Well, it seemed now Lily could join him, in that small group of people who had ever truly seen behind Tom Riddle’s mask.

 

“You really don’t care, do you?” Lily asked, almost as if she couldn’t quite comprehend that, however Tom simply shrugged.

 

“I wouldn’t be a sociopath if I did,” Tom remarked before expanding, “It’s… Difficult, for me to care about even a small number of people, who are well and truly worth my regard. Sirius Black was not one of them.”

 

Lily smiled bitterly as she took that in, shaking her head as she regarded him, “I won’t say I always liked him but… But it’s too soon, and it’s so sad, and I just…”

 

She paused, trailed off, took a breath and with it all the memories of Sirius Black and all the potential of what he could have been if he’d had a little more time in this world. Tom simply stared at her, the way the light of Azrael’s runes caught in her hair and her eyelashes, and thought of everything but Sirius Black.

 

“Severus hated them,” Lily said suddenly, looking down at the cup of tea in her hands, eyes lingering on the dark leaves resting in the bottom, “Severus hated him, James, even Remus and Peter he hated. They didn’t give him much of a reason not to, they thought they were being funny, and maybe it was the first few times, way back when we were all eleven but Sev never had much of a sense of humor, and even then, it just kept going and… And no, no it was never funny.”

 

“No, it really wasn’t,” Tom noted drily, “Of course, they’ll never remember that now. Now he will forever be a martyr and for better or worse we will all have to politely nod our heads and agree.”

 

“He wasn’t a bad person,” Lily quickly interjected, “Really, he was actually quite nice, to Remus, Peter, and especially to me. And I know his family…”

 

“His father was a murderer,” Tom said flatly, “And yet, somehow, I doubt Sirius or Regulus ever knew to call him that.”

 

(Unspoken, unknown to Lily, was that if Sirius Black had had his way then he too would have been a murderer right up there with his father. But that wasn’t Tom’s story to tell.)

 

“That’s his father though,” Lily said quietly, then, imploring him with those great green eyes added, “Really, it was mostly Sev that he and James just…”

 

“Severus Snape was an acceptable victim,” Tom said slowly, “He was poor, antisocial, unimportant, arrogant, a half blood, and in Slytherin.”

 

“Sirius would never use anyone’s blood status against them,” Lily insisted, and Tom held his tongue, because likely Sirius too had believed that, had believed that with conviction but none the less Severus Snape had been a half blood.

 

More, he had been an unideal half blood. Intelligent, yes, but thoroughly unlikeable. Lily, on the other hand, had been the perfect idealized version of the mudblood. Intelligent, charming, beautiful, gracious, she was easy to like and easy to point to as an example for a cause.

 

She was the easy, token, mudblood friend as she had been Slughorn’s token mudblood Slug Club member in a way Tom Riddle had almost been.

 

Severus Snape was not.

 

“I wish… I feel like he’s still here, you know, like he’s not really dead,” Lily said, “I can’t believe he’s just gone. God, I wonder how James is doing, he must be devastated.”

 

“That’s what death is, in the end,” Tom said quietly, “A sudden conspicuous absence from the world.”

 

One Tom himself would never experience, or rather, those close to him would never experience. And what a strange thought that was, that it would be Tom, always Tom Riddle, who lingered here instead without any real reason why.

 

The best you could do was simply go on, move past the shadow their absence left behind, and step forward in whatever capacity was left to you.

 

Lily taught classes, waxed nostalgia from time to time, and tried to reconcile her memories with the reality she now faced. Minerva told tales of the four hooligans her house had been so proud of. Albus said nothing at all, but retreated into relative quiet. And Tom… Tom taught, as he always taught.

 

James Potter, however, worked, and this quickly enough lead to the arrest of Severus Snape.

 

The trouble was, what exactly did that mean for Tom Riddle, who had pushed Severus Snape down this path not so long ago?

 

* * *

 

The tale of Severus Snape, or, the tale as Tom Riddle would be willing to tell it to whoever would listen.

 

Son of an alcoholic muggle father and his beaten down alcoholic mother Eileen Prince who had once been far more than she now was. He grows up with nothing, no money, no lineage, no prestige, only his own ruthless intelligence, ambition, and a large chip on his shoulder.

 

Across the street, however, is one ray of sunlight in his life, a young muggle born girl by the name of Lily Evans. She’s his age, beautiful, and she smiles when she sees him and all the wonders he can show her.

 

And until Hogwarts it seems as if this is all that matters, and perhaps, in some ways, it is. But the truth is that it isn’t and it never will be, there are greater forces at work in this world than Severus Snape and Lily Evans.

 

Severus Snape is a tragic role, in the end. His ambition will get him nothing, every door will be slammed in his face, and he lacks the disposition to take it gracefully or willingly. The details, the marauders, Tom wouldn’t linger on them, because in the end they don’t seem all that important.

 

Perhaps, in some other world, Severus Snape, devoid of hope and overflowing with bitterness, despair, and anger in equal measure would join up with the dark lord du jour. However, there is no dark lord, and so, Severus Snape instead exits the stage with a bang in the only manner left to him.

 

And perhaps that’s rather tragic, but still, Tom would say that there was something to be admired in going out with all the flare you could manage. It was just a shame he had to go dragging Tom into it.

 

* * *

 

There was the lingering discomfort of death in Azkaban, permeating through the very stones themselves as well as the cold sea air. For now, Severus Snape was in a holding cell, in the outer ring of the prison and relatively far from the dementors themselves, but his trial before the Wizengamot was soon and there was little doubt he’d be moved inwards.

 

Lily had insisted Tom come with her.

 

Likely for some form of support, so that she wouldn’t have to weather this place alone (even Gryffindor bravery had its limits it seemed), but as it was neither she nor Severus Snape seemed to have eyes for him. Only for each other as Lily stood across from him, gripping the bars and looking down at him with sorrow, pity, and despair all rolled into one.

 

“Oh, Sev,” she said, or rather choked out, and Severus Snape smiled bitterly back at her.

 

“You shouldn’t have come,” he rasped, his voice worn at the edges in a way that had never seemed possible for him, even as a student he had always sounded cultured.

 

“Of course, I came,” Lily balked, looking mildly offended, “Did you really think I wouldn’t when I heard?”

 

“I called you a… I didn’t think you’d come,” he insisted, quieter now, his own spoken slur from so many years ago still lingering between them, not quite forgiven but not nearly as tangible as it once was either.

 

Tom wondered if Lily realized that she could forgive Tom for murder and yet could not forgive Severus Snape for a mere word. It said far too much about him, Tom thought, that Tom had no desire to point this out to her.

 

“I told you already that I… It’s done, that doesn’t matter, not now that... God, Sev, please tell me you…” she trailed off, rightfully terrified of what he might say, or what he might not say to protect himself in these few last moments before his trial.

 

Where anything and everything would be used against him.

 

“I’m not going to pretend I’m not glad he’s dead,” Severus cut in, much to Lily’s wide-eyed terror.

“Don’t say something like that, Sev.”

 

“Why not? It’s true, I just wish Potter had gone down with him,” Severus said with a shrug, “Really, Lily, I can’t go too much further downhill than this. The least I can allow myself is a little honesty.”

 

“Honesty?” Lily asked, “Is that what you’re calling this? Sev, you act like they’ve already convicted you!”

 

And they had, and Severus knew it, if they had enough evidence to bring him here they had more than enough evidence to put him away. More, for this, they wouldn’t need evidence, just a good excuse.

 

That knowledge burned in his dark eyes as he looked at her, at Lily, and there was such… Tenderness in them, in that moment, that bright youthful burning love for Lily Evans and all the futures he could never have with her.

 

And despair, because he had always known she was out of his reach.

 

In him was the knowledge that Severus Snape no longer had anything to live for.

 

“Well, I won’t give up hope, even if you have,” Lily said, backing away from the bars with that familiar determined look on her face, “I’ll be at your trial, and you can know that I’ll be rooting for you every step of the way.”

 

Even if he was the one responsible? Yes, probably, as Lily had remained in Tom’s corner so she would remain in Severus’ corner until the very end. And there was something sad to be said for that, sad and beautiful at the same time.

 

Lily squeezed Tom’s arm for support, looked him in the eye, and slowly but surely walked down the corridor and out of sight, hands in her pockets, no doubt already planning her next meeting with Severus before the trial when she’d regained her temper.

 

Both Tom and Severus watched her until even her bright red hair was out of sight, then, almost unwillingly, their eyes turned towards each other. 

 

And in them… In them was the thought that Severus wasn’t fooled, that he knew what was going on between her and him, even if the Prophet miraculously hadn’t noticed, and that perhaps Tom had said what he had simply to get Severus Snape out of his way.

 

However, all that Severus said, as his lips curled into a smile, was, “And you, professor?”

 

Tom said nothing, merely smiled, a small, thin, polite quirk of the lips, turned on his heel, and followed Lily out of this seaside hell that England had the gall to call a prison instead of an execution chamber.

 

Leaving Severus Snape and his accusations far behind even as the trial itself loomed overhead.


	34. Chapter 34

The end of September snuck up on Tom in a way that it hadn’t in years, but perhaps this was warranted, as instead of a count down to the holidays and the students leaving it was instead a rather tense countdown to the trial of one Severus Snape for the murder of Sirius Black.

 

The investigation had run its course very swiftly, likely because lead investigator James Potter had known exactly where to look and wasted little time looking elsewhere. Severus Snape had been questioned, arrested as the prime suspect, then scheduled for trial before the Wizengamot in that very first week that the aurors had been on the case.

 

Now, with October looming over the horizon, as Tom graded papers on the tension between the muggle West and the Soviets and what this meant for the wizarding world, he felt as if the shadow of Severus Snape’s words from Azkaban were looming over him.

 

“And you, professor?”

 

Et tu?

 

It hadn’t quite been Shakespeare, but it had been close enough, and there had been such bitterness and resentment in Severus Snape’s dark eyes.

 

The question now, that rang throughout his mind every so often, was if anyone would come for Tom himself? What, exactly, would a Severus Snape who was fully aware that he would be condemned to his own death, tell his most hated enemy captain James Potter, even at the cost of his own pride? For Lily Evans, for love, how far would he go to tear Tom Riddle down with him? Yes, strange as it sounded, Tom was willing to bet, that in his own way, Severus Snape would do just about anything for Lily Evans.

 

So, if he told him, if Severus Snape told James Potter about the suggestion once given to him by professor Tom Riddle, what could Tom be charged with?

 

Conspiracy to murder?

 

Or something else, something flimsier, did they even need an excuse at all for a mudblood professor who was little more than an exercise in tokenism? These days, with shops being burned to the ground and tension everywhere, he wondered if they would finally admit how far gone they truly were. Would they recognize that they had been clinging to the glory days of the magical British empire, failing with their muggle counterpart, and dying before Tom himself had even finished school?

 

Even before Ubik, Britain had been collapsing inward on itself, they had long since passed any decent event horizon.

 

So, if they came for him, what then?

 

After pondering this for a few weeks, he’d eventually, on the first Sunday he finally had some amount of free time to escape from the castle, made his way to his own house and started to pack ups his basement filled with contraband. Was this an overdramatic overreaction that made him feel more than a little ridiculous and paranoid? Perhaps. However, would it be easier to flee the country if he’d already sorted and packed? Certainly.

 

Of course, there was always that nagging thought in his head, as he stuffed books into a suitcase the defied the muggle conventions of time and space, that he very likely wouldn’t have time to pick up even a small suitcase as the first thing they were likely to do was stakeout his house.

 

Then again, perhaps not, perhaps they’d count on apparition wards being enough to hold him. Then again, perhaps these hypothetical wards would be enough to hold him, Tom didn’t really know, he was certainly more powerful than even the most powerful of wizards but it wasn’t something he’d put into practice… That was probably something that he should consider next.

 

Still, walking into a suitcase bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, securing books onto shelves stored inside, that, at least, was something. Something more than twitching his fingers and waiting, waiting for the hammer to fall even while he tried to pretend that everything was fine (except that beloved Sirius Black, of course, was dead, God rest his rambunctious soul).

 

He sighed then, walked out to see that yes, he really had packed up the last of it, now stored in an overzealously warded trunk. Now it was quiet again, just down the road Hogwarts waited for his return, not urgently, but certainly before Monday morning and classes began again.

 

Once again, he had all the time in the world to think when, at this precise moment, thinking was about the last thing that he felt like doing.

 

With a sigh he trudged back up the stairs, made his way to the kitchen and, like the old man that he was in spirt but not in body, poured himself a goddamn cup of tea while he considered the questions he hadn’t managed to find answers to after years of considering them.

 

Where did he go from here?

 

If he left England, if he was forced out of Britain as he had always distantly suspected he would be, but now was faced with the almost certainty then where in the world could Tom Marvolo Riddle go?

 

Europe, the continent, was far too close, too many old ties with Britain, they’d certainly find him and then extradite him. America was nearly as bad for the same reason, it might be a little further, but it along with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and just about any former British Colony or commonwealth had kept close ties with the magical motherland.

 

Well, that still left a good majority of the world, a world that Tom had spent a lifetime not seeing. In fact, this might be something of a golden opportunity, the kick out the door he needed to get him out of Great Britain and actually see all these places whose history he had taught to his students.

 

A violent, unneeded, and somewhat irritating kick but a kick none the less.

 

“That was unbearably optimistic,” Tom Riddle said to himself, internally reminding himself that while he didn’t necessarily regret goading Severus Snape into murder or Sirius Black’s untimely demise, he would not be in this position if he’d just held his tongue and let Severus Snape hang himself.

 

The sad truth of it was that Lily Evans likely would have been the only one to miss him. Severus Snape would have all too easily made another Moaning Myrtle.

 

Of course, Tom would also likely one day be in this position because of something else, Severus Snape vindictive and on trial just made that day come surprisingly earlier. Really, as he’d already told Lily, he’d seen this coming years ago, perhaps since he’d been banished from Ubik…

 

He paused at that, a thought striking him. Lily, what would he tell her? Could he tell her at all? It was very likely to be abrupt, he wouldn’t get much of a chance. A single note left behind, and then what? How would he go about contacting her afterwards? And would it even be in either of their best interests for him to write her at all…

 

He stopped, paused, brow furrowing as he realized just where his thoughts had headed entirely without his permission, “Well, shit.”

 

Admitting attraction was one thing, even having the talk had been one thing, as had been the dating thing they’d embarked on which mostly seemed to have snowballed out of Tom’s control, but here he was thinking about what the hell he was going to do in regard to her when he was hypothetically fleeing the country.

 

Perhaps, even in the back of his head, considering dragging her off with him as they fled the country as a modern day magical version of Bonnie and Clyde, only… not.

 

Well, Tom, he thought to himself, good to know your priorities are in as good an order as ever. He was beginning to suspect that secretly, despite his sociopathy and general disinterest in sex, he was quite the romantic.

 

Tom Riddle, scourge of Wool’s Orphanage, a romantic…

 

There were no words.

 

“I have got to get over this midlife crisis I’m having,” he said to himself with a despairing sigh. Well, he had to get over it as soon as he found out whether he was fleeing the country or not, that likely would decide for him.

 

And if he had any sense at all then fleeing the country would cure Tom of whatever the hell had come over him recently and he’d be back to being whatever he’d been before… Before what? What had been the turning point in his surreal life? Hogwarts? Ubik? Taking the Muggle Studies position?

 

If he could do it all over again, if he could choose a starting point, a single moment where everything would shift, then where the hell would he even start?

 

He was about to moodily start his second cup of tea, not quite ready to face the active mourning period of Hogwarts and the constant nostalgia of Sirius Black, it wouldn’t kill them if he didn’t show up until breakfast on Monday, he wasn’t scheduled to patrol the corridors after hours tonight, when a quiet knock sounded at his door.

 

Tom unconsciously, wordlessly, summoned his wand to his fingertips, breathing out quietly, all his thoughts and nervousness suddenly gone as he realized that this was likely the moment he had been waiting for.

 

He was out of time.

 

The knock sounded again, no impatience to it, as if it had all the time in the world. Not Lily’s insistent, mulishly stubborn knocking at his door that had become damningly familiar as of late, neither was it the slight hesitance of an unfamiliar student (or Arthur who was still rightfully terrified of Tom).

 

However, as the silence continued, thrumming in Tom’s ears, he couldn’t think that it sounded like James Potter knocking at his door, or anyone coming to arrest him for that matter. It lacked authority, insistence… Stepping through his small home, through the living room and finally to the door itself, wand held oh so carefully in hand, he opened it to the person he’d least expected.

 

There, in dark rather plain wizarding robes, without garnish or family crest or any enchanted niceties to enhance one’s features, wearing a pair of almost comically thick glasses, looking as if he was nothing more than a student (dressed, perhaps, in strangely morose clothing) who had wandered too far from the Hogwarts grounds, was the ageless emperor of Ubik.

 

Tom stared, forced himself to process whatever the hell it was he was seeing. Specifically, to acknowledge that, if he hadn’t known Azrael’s face concerningly well, then he wouldn’t have possibly recognized him, and finally said the last thing he would ever have expected to say to Azrael, “Coming out of nowhere to lecture me on my lackluster love life was one thing, impersonating Clark Kent on my doorstep is just insulting to all of mankind.”

 

Yes, he’d imagined many things he could say or not say to Azrael, whether he was angry, regretful, or even still yearning after all that time (and yearning slightly still although he didn’t know quite for what), he’d never pictured that particular sentence coming out of his mouth.

 

Azrael blinked, somewhat stunned, and had the decency to look at least slightly shocked and embarrassed as he readjusted the glasses and then peered down at himself, “Clark Kent? I don’t look like bloody…”

 

He stopped, or rather forced himself to stop before looking up, and he said with a wry twist of his lips that really had no business being on his face, “Right, well, I suppose what you meant to ask was why am I here when I could be anywhere but here.”

 

“No,” Tom said, still somewhat dazed by the surreal experience that he was starting to suspect was now his life, “I was going to ask about the glasses.”

 

And the moment just kept getting decidedly more surreal as Azrael, with what seemed like genuine indignation, asked, “What’s wrong with the glasses?”

 

They looked like he had cut out the lenses from the bottom of a pair of coke bottles they were so thick, they perched precariously on his sculpted nose, completely overwhelming his delicate features and almost succeeded in hiding the strange, alluring, almost elfin cast to Azrael’s face. As it was though, they somehow made him look more off, like a cheaper imitation of mankind rather than the generally good approximation that he was on a day to day basis.

 

His eyes, through the lenses, seemed magnified yet somehow diluted all at once, the green like otherworldly light filtering down from stars, his hair sticking out at odd angles as it always had, casting shadows on the dark frames. This, combined with his plain English wizard’s wardrobe, that pale mask like quality of his forever youthful face, and the strange hint of that faded scar on his forehead beneath his hair, turned him into a strange poor wizard’s Clark Kent, an utterly alien being trying and failing to disguise himself as what he thought was an ordinary man.

 

“If you were a dangerously nearsighted old muggle woman on the verge of blindness I’d say they’re an excellent choice,” Tom finally decided on, because he wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, just generally alarming. Although, the shock of it did keep other more dangerous emotions at bay, emotions that Tom had neither the time nor desire to address.

 

Old issues that had never quite died between them and the abyss that decades had created.

 

“You do know, Tom, there are some people in this world who are nearsighted,” Azrael announced, much to Tom’s complete and utter indifference, “I was once this nearsighted, I’ll have you know.”

 

Somehow, Tom thought to himself, of all the things that had ever been said to him, including Azrael announcing that he was Death itself (something Tom still hadn’t quite come to terms with, truth be told) and that he’d had a wife (something that Tom had at one point realized he’d never come to terms with), it was his announcement of having once been hopelessly nearsighted that Tom just couldn’t buy.

 

He also dearly wanted to point out that wearing a pair of thick glasses, equivalent to wearing a fake mustache, really didn’t do much to make him look English or even human at all.

 

Azrael seemed to grow impatient with Tom’s silent pondering, and asked, motioning to the inside of the house, “May I come in?”

 

“Come in?” Tom asked, jerked out of his own musings and realizing just who was on his doorstep, that mild annoyance now transforming itself into something deeper and burning and altogether scornful, “I haven’t seen you in over twenty years, disregarding that last time, and you invite yourself into my house?”  


Azrael cringed somewhat, his face falling, a truly bizarre sight given his entire getup, “Right, yes, I can always stay at an inn…”

 

Tom offered him a thin, unamused, smile then dragged him inside and slammed the door behind him. He then silently motioned for Azrael to follow him, without a word, into the basement, Azrael’s eyebrows raising slightly at the sight of his own runes lining the now empty walls.

 

If he thought anything of the barren state of the room, of the lone suitcase standing in the middle, packed and ready to go, he said nothing. Somehow, Tom thought that he might already know, Azrael had always been strangely prescient that way.

 

Tom then summoned from one of the cupboards a large bottle of fire whiskey, tossing it towards the god emperor and flopping down into a conjured arm chair with a sigh as he announced, “I have the feeling that I’m going to need that.”

 

“I’m not sure if I should feel flattered or insulted,” Azrael said as he eyed the bottle, however, he seemed amused enough as he wandlessly and wordlessly conjured a pair of glasses, pouring the bottle into each.

 

The light of the runes caught in his hair, even in the center of the room, painting golden streaks in the dark and feather like strands. Here, in the dark, Tom could pretend that his clothes weren’t English at all, and that as their bodies hadn’t aged neither had their minds, and it was over twenty years ago in the hills of Mars just outside of the lights of the great city, staring up into the dark sky where the Earth glittered back at them in the distance.

 

And then, with the glass in his hand, Tom remembered that all the time in the world had passed between them, and the moment was gone.

 

“Hardly flattery, think of it as preparation,” Tom said with another sigh, staring into the dark liquid in his own glass, “I may, after all, be arrested for conspiracy to murder.”

 

For a moment, as he choked on fire whiskey, Azrael looked absurdly like Lily had a few weeks earlier, when Tom had confessed all his ill deeds and misgivings over cups of Martian tea. There was the same widening of the green eyes, that same slack look of disbelief on pale sculpted features, then panic as they desperately tried to figure out what one could even say to that and if they believed it all.

 

With a stricken look, unconsciously identical to Lily Evan’s, he asked with a desperation that Tom didn’t know he could posess, “Tell me you didn’t, tell me you didn’t murder Sirius Black.”

 

Tom didn’t answer for a moment, just stared across at the man who had once been his best friend, the only person that Tom had once thought he’d ever truly be attracted to. What he saw when he looked across at Azrael, at Death, he couldn’t even describe to himself at that moment. Something though, as bitter and burning as fire whiskey. Slowly, casually as if it meant nothing to him at all, Tom asked, “Is that why you’re here?”

 

“I came for the trial, yes,” he looked for a moment as if he wanted to add something to this, some caveat or explanation that would illuminate why Azrael, Emperor of Ubik, who had himself been betrayed by Orion Black and in turn banished him and Tom and all of England with them, could feel anything for the man’s firstborn son, but Azrael said none of that, instead, he repeated, forcefully, “Did you murder him, Tom?”

 

Tom chugged back his drink, feeling it burn its way down his throat and all the way to that great gnawing pit in his stomach, and he said the only thing he could think of, the flat and simple truth, “No.”

 

And Azrael had the gall to look relieved, it was small, a slight relaxing of his features, but there none the less. Even Lily, no, understandably Lily had not once looked relieved when she’d been in his position. And for that alone, more than anything else, for that single moment Tom wish he had killed that stupid arrogant brat of a Black himself.

 

“Then it was…” Azrael started but Tom cut him off before he could even think to finish.

 

“Severus Snape, yes, I suspect so, as does James Potter and no doubt half of England,” Tom said, wincing as he took yet another drink, too quickly, he hadn’t eaten enough today and already the walls seemed to be tipping slightly and his thoughts slurring together.

 

Azrael looked pensive, drink in hand, and a truly regretful tone entered his voice, “He deserved a better life than this.”

 

“Black?”

 

How often had Tom heard that in the past weeks, how often would he hear it for the rest of his life, from even the most unlikely sources like emperors on Mars who should not even know about Sirius Black’s existence.

 

“Severus, Sirius… Both of them,” Azrael said with a shrug and bitter, sorrowful, smile curling his lips, “Beneath everything Severus Snape was… he had the potential to be a good man.”

 

Tom paused in his drinking, there it was again he thought, that strange connection that Azrael seemed to have to events and times he should care nothing about, “Of all the people in all the worlds to argue with me about Sirius Black and Severus Snape… Sirius Black was dangerously unhinged as his father was dangerously unhinged, he would have done something truly idealistic and reckless, as for Severus Snape, he has long since realized that he has nothing to live for. It’s a tragedy, certainly, almost Greek in nature, but that does not make either of them good men with potential.”

 

Even without Tom, Tom wondered if the pair of them wouldn’t have always come to something like this.

 

“They had potential,” Azrael insisted, downing his own glass, “You may never believe me, but if you, Tom Marvolo Riddle, had the potential to be where you are now then they must have had every door open to them.”

 

And there it was again, for Tom this time, seeing his own template of Tom Marvolo Riddle written over Tom himself, judging him constantly against it and looking for the overlapping parts, ridiculing what didn’t fit.

 

As if Tom Riddle was his standard for everything that could possibly go wrong in a human being.

 

Tom, viciously, poured himself another glass and swallowed another searing drink down.

 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Azrael said quietly, except, as he removed the glasses from his face and set them on a small conjured coffee table, it was more than clear that he had. He just regretted losing himself long enough to say it.

 

“I was wondering if I could stay with you, until the trial is over,” Azrael finally said, “And I didn’t come here, to your house, solely because of that. I had thought… I had thought it would be a good time to see what you were up to, how you have been since we last really talked to each other. Truly, this time, instead of coming down from on high to give you dating advice.”

 

Tom snorted slightly, his anger dissipating without his will as he instead became distantly and almost irritatingly amused, “Well, somehow, it was just like you to come down from on high and give me dating tips. I took your sodding advice, by the way, I told her.”

 

“Ah,” Azrael said for a moment, clearly at a loss for what to say as he took another drink of his own, likely concluding what Tom himself would have in his place; that Lily Evans was a sensible human being who would have left without even daring to look back.

 

Quietly, the alcohol fueling his amazement even now with the ghost of her strange presence in the room, he said, “She didn’t leave.”

 

“Really?” Azrael asked.

“Yes, it was the strangest thing… I think she might have done it just to be contrary, honestly,” Tom said before pausing, thinking back to that odd day, to the attack on Diagon Alley and then the confession of everything he was to a girl who, despite everything, had accepted it, “Or perhaps not, perhaps she’s just a fool.”

 

And Tom was a fool himself for having a fondness for fools.

 

Azrael said nothing, stared into his glass, a lost look on his features, finally, on seeing Tom staring at him he offered him a wry, rather bitter, smile, “What a brave new world this is.”

 

A brave new world, yes, somehow that was a fitting term for it. A brave new world, that even now, with the threat of arrest over his head, Tom had to find a way to navigate in.

 

“You’d like her,” Tom offered after another drink, the alcohol loosening his tongue perhaps more than it should have been, softening his own bitterness and anger into something nostalgic and bearable, “She reminds me so much of you sometimes.”

 

“Does she?” Azrael asked, but unsurprised, as if he had expected that sort of a comment, as Azrael was always unsurprised by inherently surprising things, “I had always thought I resembled the Potters more.”

 

“No,” Tom said with a shake of his head, motioning towards Azrael, “The ridiculous hair, maybe, except yours just might be ten times worse. The eyes though, your face even… Sometimes it’s downright eerie.”

 

Azrael laughed, an emotional thing that was at once both delighted and sad, he downed his own drink, “That means more than you probably will ever know, ever want to know…”

 

“Are you sure she’s not your bastard daughter?” Tom asked, before paling, realizing what he’d just asked, and amending, “Wait, no, I’m not sure I actually want to know the answer to that.”

Azrael, though, seemed quite entertained by that question, “I’m quite sure she’s not my bastard daughter or legitimate daughter for that matter.”

 

“Good, because this is already bloody weird and that would just add a whole other layer of Freudian drama that I’m not prepared to deal with,” Tom said, sagging with relief that was all too real, because damn if those two didn’t look eerily similar for not being related.

 

“Believe me Tom, it’d be me who couldn’t handle the bloody Freudian drama,” Azrael insisted with a laugh before adding with more sobriety, “She is a bit young for you though… And being told is different than knowing.”

 

“Perhaps,” Tom allowed, but frankly, at this point, he wouldn’t be surprised if Lily would stubbornly hang onto him until the bitter end. If she could have faith in Severus Snape, when the guillotine was hanging over his head, surely, somehow, she could believe in Tom.

 

Was it terrible that, even slightly tipsy on fire whiskey and growing plastered by the minute, that filled him with a strange lightness an untethered hope that he hadn’t felt in such a very long time?

 

The Martian emperor seemed to have nothing to say to that, instead sat as this odd boy who would never be a man, out of place inside of Tom’s barren basement that had once housed everything and anything he thought he couldn’t get away with.

 

How fitting, that despite all odds, Azrael would find himself down here.

 

And also, how fitting, despite the silence, the anger, the bitterness, the regret, and the hopeless longing he could find nothing to say, nothing meaningful, and that the only thing he could hope to do in a time and place like this was to get hideously drunk with a god emperor.

 

Still, perhaps, Tom mused to himself, he could live with that.


	35. Chapter 35

Classes were as good as cancelled the day of the trial. Tom, for his own part, had cancelled all his classes for the day, as he knew Minerva, Slughorn, and well, just about every professor on staff had. Sirius Black had touched them all, one way or another, it was almost natural that the day of the trial for his murder before the Wizengamot, a good portion of the staff would clear out to watch.

 

He imagined if seating wasn’t limited, and it wasn’t a homicide case, then many a student would find their way to the proceedings as well.

 

As it was though, that bright Monday morning, the air brisk as Fall headed towards the start of Winter, he imagined the castle felt dreadfully cold and empty. Still, from the outside, standing on his doorstep and staring back towards the castle, it looked like it was any other ordinary Fall day.

 

“It brings back memories, doesn’t it?”

 

And looking over his shoulder, there was Azrael, Clark Kenting again with his hideous glasses and his sober wizarding robes, barely passing for someone old enough to have graduated Hogwarts, staring out at Hogwarts with a fond nostalgia for a place that had been all too glad to see the back of him.

 

Tom breathed out a sigh and, of all the emotions he could possibly feel, it was aggravation that came through, “What are you wearing?”

 

Though it had only been a few days, a few days of Azrael loitering in his house, looking strangely domestic as he’d be there when Tom left in the morning and came back at night, Tom had already found that he was somewhat done with his presence here.

 

No, perhaps that wasn’t quite right, perhaps after the shock had worn off Tom had been done to start with. There was a low-grade aggravation and fury inside of him, that he could just walk back into Tom’s life, for a trial of all things and expect to walk back out again. A feeling that no amount of fire whiskey could dilute and no spat out argument could fully resolve.

 

Not that there had really been an argument, drinking yes, but an argument, how could they even get that far? They danced around each other, talked about the weather, classes, the farce that was Tom’s current existence but hardly of anything that mattered.

 

So instead of words there was just a constant irritation building inside of him by the second, growing every time he saw him sitting in his chair reading books, magazine articles, or even just standing there like an idiot like he could pretend to be British and no one would even notice.

 

And one of these moments Tom was going to snap.

 

Except…

 

Except there was something bitterly nostalgic about seeing him here too, looking out at Hogwarts, looking for all the world like nothing had changed when everything had. Because yes, the sight of Hogwarts did bring back memories.

 

“What do you want me to wear, Tom?” Azrael asked, sounding rather aggravated himself as he motioned to his attire, “For the record, I think I look perfectly ordinary.”

 

“You look perfectly ridiculous,” Tom retorted without even the least bit of sympathy, “The glasses, my god, and the hair…”

 

“What’s wrong with my hair?”

 

“It’s your hair!” Tom said, motioning to it in all its chaotic wonder, “It looks fine when you barely look human in the first place, but when you’re wearing coke bottle glasses and a tie you can’t help but notice that it’s sticking all over the place, practically defying gravity!”

 

He looked almost comical, like a cartoonist’s wet dream, rather than an actual human being you expected to run into on the street.

 

“I can’t help what my hair looks like!” oh, he sounded rather defensive about that, unnaturally so, apparently Tom had struck a bit of a nerve.

 

“So, you do admit that your disguise, as it were, is the rough equivalent of you slapping on a fake mustache,” Tom pressed, before Azrael could irately respond to that he checked the time, still early yet, but Lily tended to be early…

 

And then there she was, apparating onto his doorstep, dressed in rather plain clothing that fit the bleak mood of the trial as well as the formality of it. What a trio they made, Tom in his dark muggle suit, Lily with her bright hair clashing with the very tone of her outfit, and Azrael looking like, well, whatever the hell he even looked like. A poor man’s Hogwarts student, Tom supposed.

 

“Hi, Tom, sorry there were a few last-minute things and…” she looked up, trailed off, and spotted Azrael loitering on Tom’s doorstep looking at her with a strange wide-eyed fascination and panic.

 

Odd, since Tom had told Azrael she would be coming, but words hadn’t seemed to be enough to prepare him.

 

And looking at them standing next to one another, those inklings of familiarity Tom had always felt solidified themselves. It wasn’t just the eyes or the shape of the face, no, it was the way they held themselves, the expressions, even now as they silently took each other in they were unconsciously mirroring the other.

 

For all that he was a man, a young man, and his hair was dark and his features slightly off from hers, there was an eerie similarity to them that could not be denied.

 

And looking at them Tom had the horrible thought that this meant, in some sense, he’d only ever really liked one person. He’d just upgraded from the underage male version to the barely legally aged ginger female version.

 

Congratulations, Tom, you have a very clear type.

 

Azrael broke the silence, stepping forward and grabbing Lily’s hand in his to vigorously shake it with an eagerness that was very out of place, “It’s Harry, friend of Tom’s, I… came for the trial.”

 

Lily slowly, carefully, turned towards Tom and pinned him with a look that screamed that it had taken her two seconds to put two and two together. Never mind that Harry was introducing himself as a friend when he was clearly decades Tom’s junior or that he hadn’t given a last name.

 

And Harry, really, could he have picked a more generic name? Wasn’t that also the forbidden name that Tom was never allowed to name his children? Tom supposed he could have stolen Tom, so at least he’d had the sense to avoid that, but still, of all the names, he’d gone and picked Harry.

 

“Right, Harry…” Lily said, shaking his hand and giving Azrael a rather awkward, panicked, smile, as the implications of shaking hands with the Martian emperor sunk in, “I… It’s, um, a pleasure to meet you.”

 

She flushed then, realized what she had just said, “Not the circumstances, of course, the circumstances are horrible but… Tom mentioned you, a few times.”

 

Now it was Azrael’s chance to look somewhat awkward as he smiled, glanced at Tom, and drily remarked, “Yes, he said as much.”

 

That seemed to be enough to kill any conversation before it started, which was just as well, as there was no form of this conversation that Tom was comfortable having out in the open. Or, for that matter, in his warded house. He… He didn’t really know. He supposed he didn’t necessarily like the idea of these two meeting, didn’t like this moment where they could stare into each other’s eyes. Some part of him had grown to relish the separation in his life, the before and after, and didn’t like the idea that all his past mistakes could so easily come back to haunt him even now.

 

Or perhaps he didn’t like the strange surreal idea that these two could now gossip about him behind his back.

 

“Good things?” Lily finally asked, breaking the silence, eyes wide appearing both awed and surprised that Tom had spoken about her to none other than the emperor of Ubik, “He… mentioned good things, about me?”

 

Azrael opened his mouth, closed it, then offered a far too fond smile given that he should have no idea who this girl even was, as he always had far too many feelings about things he had no business knowing, “Of course.”

 

Oh lord, Tom couldn’t help but think as his eyes went from one to the other, from Azrael’s bemused expression to Lily’s now somewhat affronted and determined one. They were going to make this horrifically awkward, weren’t they?

 

“He… He said, well, he said you actually ran into each other earlier, this summer, and that… That you said that I should be dating James Potter,” Lily’s eyes were unrelenting and accusing, apparently whatever nervous awkwardness she felt now gone in the face of this dweeby boy wearing a god emperor’s face.

 

“Well…” Azrael trailed off with a shrug and a rather panicked look, perhaps just realizing what kind of a corner he had backed himself into with that conversation. Not that Tom had any sympathy for him.

 

“Have you… met James Potter?” Lily asked, eyebrows lowering as she stepped towards him, a very unamused look on her face, “I’m just kind of curious, since you went and gave an opinion without even meeting me and, well let’s be honest… It’s James Potter, he’s, and this is putting it gently, an egotistical toe rag.”

 

Azrael’s smile became somewhat forced, affronted in turn, as if insulting James Potter was akin to insulting himself, and his voice had that barely contained note to it as he responded, “Perhaps, Miss Evans, you simply haven’t given him the chance.”

 

“Do we really have to do this…” Tom started but Lily was talking over him before he could even start.  


She pointed a finger in Harry’s chest, green eyes blazing like twin righteous suns, “Oh, believe me, Harry, I have given him more than enough chances. I have given him seven years of chances to learn how not to be a dick! And even if during some point in all that he miraculously grew up, became even slightly tolerable, that does not mean he gets me like some kind of reward!”

 

Tom sighed, rubbed at his temples, and wondered how long he could let this go on before they were late. Minerva would undoubtedly save at least him and Lily seats, which could be a good thing as then Azrael could go find his own bloody seat, but that might just cause even more issues as he’d look like someone’s hopelessly lost child.

 

“That’s not what I…”

 

“Oh, please, tell me what you meant!” and her hands were on her hips now as she stared at him, daring him to contradict her, “Tell me what you could have possibly meant! You show up, to Tom, by the way, not even to me personally, and say, ‘Tom, you’d better back off now old chum, old pal, your girl Lily’s got to get herself banged by none other than quidditch captain James Potter! So, you’d better just hop off the Lily express and…”

 

“That is not what I said!” Azrael spat back, which was true enough, that wasn’t exactly what he had said, but it had certainly been implied by that frankly surreal conversation. Except, watching this now, Tom almost wished Lily had been there for it.

 

“Then what did you…”

 

“That’s enough,” Tom cut in, more than at his limit, he couldn’t handle this kind of screaming without at least one cup of tea in him, “You’re both acting like children.”

 

And the sad part was that he wasn’t even exaggerating that claim, they really were both acting like children, highlighting Tom’s absurd existence and making him severely question his own taste.

 

He glanced at Azrael, “Harry, your unsolicited dating advice for Lily was not appreciated, but I think you know that.”

 

Azrael spluttered, had the gall to look actually insulted as Tom turned his attention back to Lily, “Lily, you should know that Harry’s the reason you heard anything about my life at all. So, in one respect or another, you should feel somewhat grateful to him. Even if he does have a strange fondness for arrogant toe-rags.”

 

Neither seemed entirely convinced by Tom’s rather blunt arguments, but Tom didn’t care as he cast another tempus, the digits hovering in front of him and informing him that it was past time they got on their way, “Now, with that settled, we’d best be going now or we’re going to be very late.”

 

And for better or worse they were off to the ministry, to the Wizengamot, to sit and watch the judgement and fate of Severus Snape.

  

* * *

 

“You’re late,” Minerva, unsurprisingly, noted as Tom and company arrived, seating themselves next to her in one of the last few available seats in the audience. The lords themselves were still shuffling in, only a few seats empty, otherwise a glance to the audience showed that while there were familiar faces, the smattering of expected Hogwarts professors and aurors, the Black family was conspicuously absent.

 

Bitter until the very end and beyond, it seemed.

 

“A wizard is never late,” Tom distantly retorted as he took his seat next to her, Lily cutting off Azrael to sit on Tom’s other side while Azrael, with a strange blend of amusement and irritation took the seat next to her.

 

“You always use that quote and it’s always a poor excuse,” Minerva said with a huff and a rather wry smile, it disappeared rather quickly though as the sobriety of their surroundings, of the event they were about to attend sunk in.

 

Finally, she appeared to notice Azrael, for a moment she stared at him, tried to see past the glasses and the clothes, perhaps looking back thirty years to find that strange Hufflepuff in Hogwarts and…

 

“Oh, Minerva,” Lily cut in, motioning to Azrael, “This is my cousin, Harry Evans.”

 

“Your cousin?” Minerva asked, blinking, undoubtedly thinking that she’d never heard of any cousin of Lily Evans and that he certainly hadn’t attended Hogwarts.

 

“He didn’t attend Hogwarts, it turned out some more distant relatives on his mother’s side were magical, so he’s been home schooled,” Lily said with insistence, which Tom hated to say it, but that wasn’t all that poor of one either. Granted, almost no one said no to a Hogwarts admission, but it wasn’t inconceivable, particularly from a predominantly muggle family with a few stray witches and wizards here and there.

 

Tom offered Lily a grateful and congratulatory smile for her quick thinking while she tried not to beam in return. Of course, even if she hadn’t offered it, Tom doubted Minerva would have realized who he was.

 

Azrael the Hufflepuff was fifty years dead and the emperor or Ubik would never dare set foot in England, certainly not for the trial of Severus Snape. It was utterly impossible, in any sane person’s mind, for him to be here right now.

 

“Right,” Azrael said, adjusting his glasses rather awkwardly and giving a cheerful grin, with all the air of a boy only just having escaped adolescence, “Pleased to meet you, Professor McGonagall, Lily’s told me so much about all your classes.”

 

Minerva shot him a rather amused smile as she took his hand, “And after all that you didn’t want to attend Hogwarts?”

 

“Oh, no, well,” Azrael fumbled for a legitimate excuse before landing lamely on, “I couldn’t leave home for that long. Either way, when I heard what had happened, to one of Lily’s best friends and then her old housemate, I… Well, I thought I should come.”

 

That appeared to be enough as Minerva’s attention drifted back to the trial itself, to the lords finally settling themselves, and the empty chair in the center that would hold Snape himself soon enough. There was a palpable tension in the room, or perhaps, just within Tom himself. A glance at the lords and he was certain they had all but made up their minds.

 

“How did it ever come to this, Tom?” Minerva asked him as she shook her head, by which she undoubtedly meant students murdering students, or the type of world that so easily had allowed it.

 

But it had always been that world, Tom thought to himself. After all, it was not so long ago now that Tom Riddle had once released a snake from the Chamber of Secrets, and that Hagrid had been used as a scapegoat for the event.

 

Severus Snape finally appeared, guarded by dementors, chained and wandless, and shuffling into the center of the room with a hollow look in his eyes. Something shifted, glancing over, Tom caught sight of a look of agony in Lily’s eyes, but not just hers, there was a pang of something in Azrael’s, as if this sight was burning itself into his memory even as he watched.

 

Albus Dumbledore, in his high seat acting as Supreme Mugwump, called the session into order, and with that it was almost over before it started.

 

The prosecution laid out the evidence, clear and succinct, with little room to question anything too closely.

 

Severus Snape had long had a vendetta against one Sirius Black and friends, this had been known and corroborated by many witnesses over many years from the pranksters, fellow students, to professors. The group, known to themselves and the school as the Marauders, had often played practical jokes on Severus Snape as well as various other students, and of their victims Severus Snape had taken it with the least amount of humor. The prosecution did not disclose the nature of the jokes, or how often, later they had begun to go a little too far to merely write them off as the jokes of boys being boys. It was merely stated that a long and cold grudge had been held by Severus Snape, over the actions of Sirius Black, James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew.

 

Severus Snape, it was then stated, joined an apothecary as an apprentice, having always been a very gifted student in the realm of potions. Here evidence from Horace Slughorn was shown, noting that the boy, while a bit intense for a schoolboy and lacking in social skills, had always had an incredible gift for potions. Certainly, more than enough of a gift to poison Sirius Black.

 

Then, finally, the potion itself, the poison, designed clearly to be mistaken as pepper up by Black, a fast-acting killer that moved quickly enough that the hastily swallowed bezoar had little to no effect. One which clearly went beyond a mere mistake by the apothecary or even the talents of a determined assassin, this came from someone with a gift for potions, someone like Severus Snape.

 

Reason, ability, and motive, all neatly laid before the Wizengamot with nearly every lord already convinced and more than willing to make an example of Severus Snape.

 

Then the defense had started, and from the very first it had been shoddy and pitiful. The crux of the rather lame defense was that yes, although Severus Snape had motive, though he had connections to the auror department through the apothecary, he might not truly have the means.

 

It was one thing to be a gifted Hogwarts student, quite another to do what they claimed he had done within little over a year of leaving Hogwarts, surely, this was the work of a master rather than a mere apprentice.

 

Naturally, however, this theory came off rather unconvincing to everyone who heard it, even the lawyers themselves. All of England knew that Severus Snape had done it, and by the look on his face, even now, Severus Snape would never regret it.

 

All throughout this Severus Snape stared forward, never blinking, never moving his head, just dully staring at the podium while he waited for judgement which, by the sound of the prosecution, would likely be concluded in the afternoon session.

 

Finally, just like that, the morning session was over, Dumbledore’s gavel falling and the lords shifting and leaving their seat, and all Minerva could say as everyone began filing out was, “It’s just a shame, Tom.”

 

Not that he was innocent, or even guilty, just that it was a shame that it had somehow come to this. Because, in Minerva’s eyes, both Sirius Black and Severus Snape could have so easily had had a future.

 

“Yes,” Tom noted, eyes lingering on Severus, who would be guarded and remain in the court room until the Wizengamot returned an hour from now. And then, to Azkaban again…

 

With that thought he stood, hands in the pockets of his suit, and noted, “I suppose we might as well get drinks.”

  

* * *

 

The Leaky Cauldron was hardly crowded.

 

It was a week day, in that blessed time after Hogwarts had started but before the rush of holiday shopping could even think about starting. Most in the Wizengamot had either gone home for the hour or else to the ministry cafeteria, as a result, there was a surreal emptiness in the pub, and Minerva, Tom, Lily, and Azrael’s presence seemed much louder than it would have had it been any other time.

 

For the first few minutes it’d been rather solemn as they’d ordered their drinks, everyone but Azrael’s alcoholic, and only because Azrael looked far too young and lacked the ID to get himself fire whiskey. Undoubtedly, he and Tom would once again be drinking through Tom’s stores tonight, so Tom supposed it was just as well.

 

Eventually, it was Lily who broke the silence, “He might not have done it.”

 

She gripped her glass and stared down at the table, not daring to look at any of them, “I know that everyone thinks he did, that he has more than his fair amount of reasons, that he could have if he wanted to, but that doesn’t mean he did it either. It wasn’t like they got any real evidence out of him, it could have been anybody, it could have been an accident, and he didn’t confess to it.”

 

“His first steps in occlumency were not in his favor,” Tom said quietly, it was a well-known fact that occlumency, even the beginnings of occlumency, played hell with veritserum. Only the fact that occlumency was difficult as hell and relatively obscure kept usage of veritserum in place at all.

 

However, what Lily neglected to mention was the recording they had played, where Severus Snape had more than once confessed that he wasn’t displeased that Sirius Black was no longer in the world.

 

From the very beginning, it seemed, Snape hadn’t held out much hope for his trial.

 

“That doesn’t mean he did it!” Lily said, shooting him a glare to which Tom could only raise a single dark eyebrow and take a sip of his drink. How was it, that fire whisky these days always tasted so bitter?

 

“Either way,” Azrael cut in, a tired and musing expression on his face as he stared into his butterbeer, “I do not envy Severus Snape. We all have our free will of course, but sometimes, it seems as if our lives force us into difficult paths from which there seems to be no good exit. I had hoped… Hearing about Severus Snape from Lily, I’d hoped it would never come to something like this.”

 

There was something more to that, Tom couldn’t help but think. These were not words that he would have said yesterday, or even days before that. What was it he always said? Something about possibilities, of infinite possibilities, and how Tom himself was living proof of them. However, there was a resigned and old look on his face now, as if he had to force himself to conclude what Tom himself had regarding Severus Snape.

 

Somehow, in one way or another, it was always coming to this.

 

“They haven’t said he’s guilty yet,” Lily spat out as she took another sip of her own quickly depleting drink, “It’s not over, not yet, and I’d appreciate it if you’d remember that.”

 

Minerva offered Lily a somewhat sympathetic smile, but only somewhat sympathetic, soon enough her heart would undoubtedly turn cold to Severus Snape. Because while there was some sympathy to be had for a victim of harassment, cold blooded murder was hardly a condonable response.

 

She had once turned the hapless Rubeus Hagrid in for murder, and it had almost destroyed her, turning her back on the memory of Severus Snape would be a cake walk.

 

With that, and with a sigh, she was standing and grabbing all her belongings and sparing the rest of them, Lily in particular, one final exhausted glance, “I think I’ll grab our seats early, make sure they’re still there for the afternoon session.”

 

And with that, they were down to their mismatched trio once again.

 

“I should have done something,” Lily finally said with a sigh, resting her head against her hands as she stared down at her lap, “I… I knew what was happening, for years, and I thought I was doing something. It wasn’t exactly as if I approved of James Potter and all the rest, and I made sure they knew it, that Sev knew it but… I never thought he’d be capable of something like this.”

 

Lily looked up, paused, a rueful, bitter, smile growing on her lips, “No, that’s wrong, I knew he was capable of something like this. Maybe, I’ve always known, from the very beginning or at least from fifth year.”

 

She gave a small humorless laugh, looking Tom dead in the eye, wiping her bright hair away from her eyes as she quietly confessed, “You know, he called me a mudblood, and that… The word hurt, of course it did, but that wasn’t the worst part of it. It was the look he gave me when he said it, because for that single instant he loathed me. Not James, not Sirius, as they held him upside down laughing at him, not even the idea of everything I represented, but me specifically. And I thought, for that single moment, that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if he could.”

 

Quietly she returned her gaze to her drink, “I just really hoped he wouldn’t.”

 

Then, slowly, her eyes met Azrael’s, took in the almost tortured expression on his own face, “Why are you here, exactly?”

 

“I…”

 

She cut him off before he could even start, eyes boring into his, searching for something, “Did you know Severus or Sirius? You seem like you do, sometimes, but I’m sure they’ve never met you before, or if they did, then they have no idea who you really are.”

 

“No, they never met me,” he said rather swiftly, with unshakeable confidence.

 

“Then why do you care?” Lily asked, “Not just care but that you’d come all the way down here, just to watch, not even for Tom. I just…”

 

“Lily,” Tom cut her off, grabbing her hand in his before she could point it towards Azrael, “Not here.”

 

Lily sighed again, glanced at him, sent him an imploring look but relaxed and relented. Content for now to leave Azrael’s mysteries, and there were so very many of them, to himself as Tom had always allowed him to.

 

“I’m sorry, Lily,” Azrael finally said, that old and worn look on his face again, clashing with his persona of a young British man and his thick glasses, “Believe me when I say that I do wish we had met in less difficult circumstances.”

 

“Difficult circumstances,” Lily asked, that smile returning, “Is that what this is? My best… My first real friend, best friend almost all the way through Hogwarts, is going to be imprisoned for the rest of his life, for something that I hope he didn’t do but I can’t say he didn’t or wouldn’t if he could, and they may even sentence him to death. I’m not sure difficult circumstances is the term for this.”

 

But did she forgive him, Tom wondered. Did she, even now, even faced with the horrifying truth and reality that she would never see him again, that he would never be free again, that he had killed a man that they’d both gone to school with and known so well, forgive him? And if she couldn’t now, if she couldn’t later, then how could she possibly forgive Tom?

 

It was, perhaps, a sign of something that Tom couldn’t find it in himself to ask.

 

So instead he raised his glass, “To Sirius Black and Severus Snape,” he held Lily’s eyes as he spoke, looking deep into them, and hoping she could read more than his words inside them, “And a world where today would have been inconceivable.”

 

When they returned, within the hour, Severus Snape was sentenced to life imprisonment on the prison island of Azkaban.


	36. Chapter 36

“I have always hated Azkaban,” Azrael said, and though his cheeks were flushed by fire whiskey his words were not clear and his eyes, no longer hidden by glasses, were sharp as daggers as he stared into the burning liquid that served as his drink.

 

Lily had gone home, lingered on his doorstep and hugged him too tightly, before apparating back to her own apartment where she could confront Severus, Sirius, and all their ghosts on her own without the emperor of Ubik hanging over her like everything else.

 

Later, when Azrael undoubtedly left and returned to his own distant life and kingdom, Tom was sure he would see her again on his doorstep. Red hair flying out behind her, eyes wide and green, a smile that tried to be cheerful but held a bitter edge directed towards him. And he would feel…

 

He didn’t know, only the thought of that feeling made his heart ache in his chest and wish that, perhaps, she had found a way to stay tonight.

 

But no, she’d just stared for a moment at the pair of them, eyes empty and dry, and then had disappeared. For a moment, staring after her, Azrael had looked pained by that as if he’d hoped…

 

Well, whatever he’d hoped, or Tom had hoped they found themselves in Tom’s warded basement, drinking, as Tom had earlier predicted.

 

“I have hated the very idea of it as well as its stark and bitter reality,” Azrael continued after another long drink, “It is barely even a prison at its heart, it is a sacrificial temple with which we feed the cruel carrion gods we cannot banish.”

 

“I can hardly argue with that,” Tom said as he nursed his own drink with a sigh, wondering if they really would come for him this time or pass him over again, and if his paranoid premonitions of seeing the inside of Azkaban would one day come true.

 

In the light of the runes of Ubik, Azrael glowed, and Tom tried to remember if he had ever looked so strange and so inhuman as he did in this half-light.

 

The moment was lost as he rubbed a face against his hand, strangely human for a moment as he blew out, and the words came out in a bitter rush that Tom could only barely catch, “You know, I never thought this would happen. I thought that if you changed, if you could be what you are now, then that would somehow solve everything. As if what you could become was at the root of…”

 

Tom offered a dark snort, remembered again why he was drinking, not over the death of Sirius Black or Severus Snape, but this reason. This clear reason that he had so long avoided confronting. So, it was half drunk and too bold that he wryly asked, “Have you ever really seen me, Azrael?”

 

Azrael looked up at that, watching as Tom motioned to himself, to his muggle suits, to his profession, to his past, to all of his failures and mediocrities piled up against something that had once been prophesized to do great and terrible things, “I am the joke of my own existence, god emperor. I, Azrael, am the punchline of fifty years of life in counting. And you… You’ve always, always, seen something else! Someone who isn’t me!”

 

And he had thought it was the other way around, that Azrael was the only one who had seen Tom at his worst and at his best, that he had seen through all the masks but was that truly ever it? Or did Azrael only look at him and see this grand master of… Of manipulation and darkness! This ineffable evil which all men were to be judged against, so no matter what Tom did now, the bar was very low as far as proving his own morality and worth were concerned.

 

As if simply by not being the worst of all men, Tom was somehow good enough, good enough to be what he was now.

 

He laughed, throwing his head back at the hilarity and staring at his cleverly warded ceiling that was perhaps the culmination of everything he had achieved, “God, do you remember when we were fourteen and all the dreams I had for myself? Not an inkling of doubt either, as if by merely existing I was capable of refashioning this country into my image. And look at me now! I’m not even capable of getting them to publish my bloody exam revisions!”

 

He looked forward again, caught Azrael’s alarmed and wide-eyed expression, even as Tom sighed with mirth and said, “And you, you sit here and claim that somehow I can be the root of all evil in England. Like I can be responsible for the deaths of Sirius Black, Severus Snape, and everybody in between. Like I have the power to change… anything.”

 

He looked down at his own pale, useless, hands, a bitter smile on his lips, “Great and terrible, what utter tripe.”

 

The fire whiskey was bitter, too bitter, but Tom drank anyway and enjoyed the way his throat burned. As he tried to put aside remembrances of his own youthful confidence and ambition. What would that Tom Riddle had done if he could see Tom now?

 

“Are you done?”

 

“No,” Tom said shortly, flatly, but Azrael hardly seemed to care.

 

“You are a good man, Tom,” Azrael said, his eyes burning, and god he looked like Lily then, like Lily had when she had sat in that same chair and said those same words to Tom with that same burning faith in something Tom simply could not see.

 

“Not a nice man, certainly not kind, but good, in a way I never would have suspected you were capable of,” Azrael said, and he leaned forward, across the divide between them and took Tom’s hands in his, “And whenever I judge anyone else against you, it is because of that, because you gave me faith where I had almost none that anything, and I mean anything, is possible. That is more than any grand ambition you once had could ever be worth.”

 

His hands tightened for a moment then, his eyes… Were his eyes watering at the corners? Tom almost couldn’t tell but it seemed like it, and his voice when he spoke began to shake ever so slightly, “And then you and Lily Evans… I think you love her.”

 

“Love?”

 

“Or you will, if you don’t already. And she loves you, I think, and the way she merely looks at you I have to wonder if she ever really loved…” he paused, closed his eyes and cleared his throat, and then spoke with his eyes closed, hands still clutching Tom’s, “And I realized today, whenever you even looked at each other, that in a world where you are a good man, if not nice or kind, then I am an aberration. I am… something that should not exist.”

 

He seemed utterly certain of this, not drunkenly certain, but perfectly serious and unwilling to let Tom get even a word in edgewise as he continued, more heartfelt and desperate than Tom had seen since they had once attended Hogwarts together all those years ago.

 

“And I… I can’t mind that, no matter what it means for me, for everything that I am or was. I…” he paused, opened his eyes and gave Tom a weary and heartbreaking smile, “Your life is so far from meaningless Tom, that sometimes it pains me.”

 

Looking at him, at the picture he made, Tom couldn’t help but remark, “I think you’re drunk.”

 

But Azrael just shook his head, “No, Tom, for whatever it’s worth I’m giving you my blessing.”

 

“Your blessing?” Tom shot back but Azrael still held on tightly, smiling like a fool, like the fool Tom had once wanted so very badly. Still, in some ways, would always want. Even now, even after all this time and all their flaws.

 

“You might not appreciate it, want it, or need it but none the less you have it. Go and get the girl, live your ordinary farce of a life and embrace it for the miracle that it is, even when it seems hopeless and pointless. Know that I will never find it either.”

 

With that Azrael leaned back with a smile, let go, and took up his glass for one last, bitterly long drink. Then he stood, or rather, staggered to his feet, ignoring Tom’s raised eyebrows at the picture he made, the emperor and the fool all rolled into one.

 

He looked down at Tom with a fondness that Tom wondered if he deserved, or if it was one that had survived all those years since Ubik, “Write, Tom, and when you marry, I will be expecting that wedding invitation.”

 

And just like that he was gone, leaving Tom, with bemusement and utter bewilderment, to continue drinking alone and wonder what the hell that all was supposed to mean anyways.

  

* * *

 

It happened the next day, a pair of faceless aurors knocked at his door after classes were finished, both dressed in standard red and with a request that was truly a demand to bring him in for questioning regarding the death of Sirius Black, Tom was taken to the ministry and into one of the back rooms.

 

In and out, without Minerva, Lily, or even the God Emperor of Ubik the wiser.

 

The room itself was stark, not muggle in design, there was no one-way mirror facing him but an observation platform outside the room entirely with magical windows in, and instead of black it was a blinding white.

 

He sat there, face blank, back straight, staring forward and giving nothing away as his heart beat like a steady drum inside his ear, waiting.

 

On his wrist, in a holster, his wand thrummed, not taken from him yet, and that surely was a sign. He was not arrested, merely questioned, they had not taken his wand, and so sweat would not pour down his back yet and Tom would not flee the country yet.

 

A man melted through the wall, walking into the room without windows or doors, and Tom himself seated face to face with auror captain James Potter who summoned a table between them.

 

He looked the same as ever, hair flying in all directions, his face fashioned with a sort of roguish charm. However, there was a somberness, a rage, to his expression that hadn’t been present as a school boy. His eyes were dark and ringed with shadows, his face paler than it had ever been in school, and when he looked across at Tom there was a coldness that he would have disdained and mocked as a boy in any Slytherin who dared wear that same look towards him.

 

Captain Potter started with no introduction, “Professor Riddle, I’m afraid Severus Snape told us everything.”

 

Ah, Tom almost wanted to smile, of course he had. Vindictiveness had been what Severus Snape had died for, of course, of course he had given Tom Riddle’s name over to the aurors.

 

For a moment Tom looked at him, this boy staring across at him, and then the surreal nature of the scene struck him and stripped any nervousness or apprehension from him. He saw James Potter for what he was, a grieving boy only just graduated from Hogwarts, and grasping onto the last straws he had.

 

“You don’t have anything,” Tom said almost wonderingly as he tasted the truth of those words, after all these years, after Mars, after Severus Snape, they still had nothing.

 

James Potter sneered, a strange look on his otherwise charming face, an ugly expression fueled and marred by anger and grief, “That’s not what Snape told us, he said you goaded him into it, that you told him to get a potions mastery and to poison Sirius Black at the first opportunity. He confessed, professor, we have all the records here.”

 

And Tom interrupted him, a smile growing on his lips, “No, you have nothing, if you had anything at all you’d put me on the stand.”

 

“Don’t think I…”

 

Tom continued as it all came together, as every piece fit into the puzzle of why even though Tom himself was a farce the auror department and murder of Sirius Black was far more of one, “And even if you did put me on the stand, you would never want me there, for I would have no choice but to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

 

James Potter leaned forward, as if Tom had given him the opening he needed, grin growing shark like in anticipation, “The truth, you mean that you colluded with him and…”

 

“The truth that I had very little to do with it,” Tom interjected, and then his eyes drifted to the wall, where he was certain Potter’s superiors were watching, and with a lilting smile he decided to drive home just what a mistake Captain Potter had made here today, “The truth that Sirius Black attempted homicide at the age of fifteen against one Severus Snape.”

 

James Potter leaned back, paled, opened his mouth, but he had lost control of the interview before it had even begun. He had lost control of everything in his fifth year and was still paying the consequences.

 

“Severus Snape,” Tom continued calmly, “A poor, halfblood, Slytherin student, who was almost mauled to death by a werewolf because of your best friend Sirius Black. The incident, of course, hushed up by Albus Dumbledore, and your other friend the werewolf, sheltered illegally by the school even after almost killing or turning another student. All because your friend, Sirius Black, thought it was funny.”

 

James Potter desperately interjected, no longer seeming to realize where he was, who he was, as he said, “That wasn’t…”

 

“Oh, but it was,” Tom assured, “It always had been, hadn’t it? Sirius Black going just a little too far, because it was funny and because he was a Slytherin. I caught Severus Snape afterwards, genuinely concerned for himself, and I told him the one thing that I thought might keep him alive through the rest of Hogwarts as he watched Sirius Black, you, and Remus Lupin get away scot free. More than that, get away with a life debt in your pocket, because you kept your friend Remus from unwittingly murdering a classmate. And I wonder if it was more because of the impact it would have on your friends versus saving Severus Snape’s life.”

 

“You’re lying!” James hissed, seeming to remember at least some of his venom and argument once again, “You didn’t give two shits about Severus Snape and we know it. But we know that you’ve always hated Sirius’ father!”

 

Tom just stared at him blankly, and for a moment, a single moment, he pitied Jams Potter. He didn’t realize or want to realize that putting Tom Riddle away would not bring Sirius Black and would not take away what he had done, what either of them had done, all in the name of good fun.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Tom finally said, and he wondered what Potter’s superiors would do with this information, if they would let it lie and stew in useless anger against Tom because of it and all the accusations he dared to throw. He imagined they would, he imagined Potter had enough influence for that at least, “Bring me to trial and you will get off, for solving the situation and for simply being a Potter. But Remus Lupin… Now what do you think will happen to him? Where in the world will they ship him off to?”

 

Because the werewolves who broke the law, who were careless and deemed dangerous, oh they did not get half the luxuries that their defeated and desperate bretheren did. There was a dark corner of Ireland, overcrowded and wild with dangerous magic, where they hid away the wolves that wore the faces of men.

 

But now was not a moment for Remus Lupin and the fate that James Potter was entirely too willing to condemn him to for a revenge against a man that was barely involved, instead it was for James Potter, as Tom saw everything he thought he was and everything he wasn’t, “You are, I think, an armchair supporter of muggleborns, captain. You talk the talk, even walk the walk from time to time, but you have no real respect for muggles, or for the history of your muggleborn peer.”

 

Tom’s eyes drifted over the red of Potter’s uniform, the cold icy cast to his eyes, as he concluded, “No, you like the ones like Lily Evans, the ones that are pretty, smart, charming, and from well-off families, the idealized muggleborn. Funny, isn’t it, captain, how you had no qualms tormenting half-blood Severus Snape for years?”

 

And James Potter looked at him, as Orion Black had once looked at him, and Severus Snape had once looked at him, and loathed him entirely. But Tom had said all he needed to say, and he knew, even in that moment, that he would never be brought to the stand.

 

And it was only a half-hour later that he was walking out into the twilight, blinking against the setting sun, and smiling for this small, petty, victory that he had earned for himself. No matter the consequences.

  

* * *

 

The winter holidays snuck up quickly after that, how could they not, after everything that had happened. Soon enough it was Tom’s birthday again, except instead of Minerva ambushing him for drinks and forcing him to celebrate late into the night it was himself and Lily in his home, the Christmas decorations she’d thrust upon him still up.

 

The tree in the corner of his living room, branches just brushing the trap door, glittered with twinkling magical stars, muggle and magical ornaments intertwined in something that was at once somehow both tacky and heartwarming.

 

“James sent me a letter,” Lily noted, leaning against him, a strange source of warmth that even now he wasn’t quite used to.

 

Tom hummed slightly, looking at the way the lights played against her hair, some parts a soft glowing white against it while the rest bled into that golden red that always reminded him of the sun itself.

 

“He always sends me a letter, every Christmas, of course he sends me letters all the time,” she laughed, back lifting and falling against his, “But the Christmas ones are something special, even for him.”

 

James Potter, needless to say, since Fall, he had sent Tom no letters at all and likely never would.

 

“I imagined he asked you for a date,” Tom said with a wry smile.

 

“Of course, he’s been asking after that for years,” Lily said but then paused, frowned slightly, “No, this time I think he actually asked me to marry him…”

 

Tom paused looked down at her and watch as Lily turned to look at him, eyes wide and earnest, “It was hard to tell he’s… He hasn’t been in a good place since Sirius died, but I think… It really seemed like he was asking me to marry him. And I almost…”  


“Said yes?” Tom questioned, not quite serious but not entirely unserious either.

 

“No, of course not,” Lily retorted, “But I almost… I felt guilty, for a moment, saying no. Because it truly was heartfelt, and I… felt for him. Not love, not marriage, but I felt for him all the same.”

 

Love, Tom thought about that word as he held her here, trapped for a moment on his birthday in a year that was at once the same and different as any other year in his life. He saw his life stretching forward, the eternal muggle studies professor, stagnating for decades upon decades…

 

Then he looked at her, and felt his voice catch in his throat.

 

“What is it?” she asked.

 

And for a moment, no, longer than a moment, ever since she had forced himself into his life and refused to leave at every available opportunity, at every opportunity she should, he looked at her and thought…

 

“I love you.”

 

Lily blinked, leaned back from him, eyes wide and face contorted into something almost comical for its surprise, “What?”

 

But he repeated it, stunned, horrified, and yet strangely light to put a name to the thing he’d been denying then only vaguely acknowledging, “I love you, Lily.”

 

And it wasn’t that he loved Azrael less for all the bitterness there, or that his past hadn’t happened or didn’t matter, or that he didn’t find himself bitter even now, but the future did not seem so bleak and dark if only because he had this present moment, this warmth, to cling to.

 

As if even by being near him, she infused every avenue of his life with hope.

 

A soft and tender hope, not for greatness, but to transcend the need for greatness entirely.

 

“Are you feeling territorial, Tom?” Lily asked, eyebrows raising and a teasing smile on her lips, “Because James Potter telling me he wants to marry me doesn’t mean you have to say…”

 

“No, no, it’s not that,” he said, holding her closer and almost desperate that she understand this more even than she had understood his own past, “But you’ve heard everything about me, seen parts of it, and you never flinched. And I love your eyes, I love the way the light catches inside them and reflects off them. I love your hair, I love your freckles, I love the way your temper burns and your goddamned stubbornness, but more than that I love you.”

 

He was a fool in love, and he was too much of a fool to even realize it until now. When even the emperor of Ubik had seen it before he had.

 

He turned her to face him fully, looking her directly in the eye and not daring to let her look away, “It doesn’t have to be tonight, Lily, or tomorrow, or even a month from now. But Lily, I can’t picture a future without you in it. Marry me, please.”

 

It wasn’t her words that told him, though she said them shortly later, but it was a wide, startled, and then overwhelming grin that gave him his answer.

 

And for this single, solitary, moment, beneath Christmas decorations that were edging out of season, Tom was happy.


	37. Chapter 37

“Lily,” Tom said, his voice authoritative and calm as if there wasn’t a doubt in his mind, “I think we shouldn’t get married.”

 

The term had started again and with it what had felt like a moment of clarity over the holidays had instead faded as all the technical details of what marriage, what a wedding even, would entail, took hold of him.

 

First, there was the thought that there would be no hiding this now, no waiting for it to disappear and he could return to his respectable life as a virgin bachelor. No, one way or another, people would hear about this, people other than Minerva would hear about this and they would now always judge him.

 

Of course, they had always judged him and always would for things far less important than that. He was no stranger to adversity, and, in his own way, had come to embrace it for most of his life. None the less, mudbloodism was different than robbing cradles.

 

Second, Lily was young, he was not, there were worlds of difference between them and that he’d forgotten that for even a moment (continued to disregard it) would lead them both to their ruin or at least to a messy divorce even if proud and determined Lily Evans refused to see it.

 

Then of course, there was the wedding itself. Lily had been far too on top of it, had brought by stacks and stacks of wedding planning materials New Years’ morning with that determined look that spelled doom for all involved. Standing dumbly on his doorstep, resisting the urge to slam his door in her face, he then realized with horror that he was expected to invite people to this travesty.

 

He wasn’t quite sure what he’d pictured when he’d said his fateful confession of love to Lily Evans, but clearly, he hadn’t been thinking.

 

“It’s simple,” he’d said as he sipped at his cup of tea that morning, doing his best to ignore stationary, pictures of venues, dresses, caterers, and more, feeling a headache building and wishing he’d never gotten himself into this mess, “We elope.”

 

“We are not eloping,” Lily said, firmly, that infuriating stubbornness evident in her voice that was not to be questioned by any man, “It doesn’t have to be a large wedding but…”

 

“One is expected to invite people to weddings,” Tom said, eyeing her across the rim of his coffee mug, “Lily, I can name the people I tolerate on one hand, and some of those are stretching it.”

 

Lily flushed then started to count off, “Well, there’s Minerva and… And Arthur and…”

 

“Keep going, Lily,” Tom noted drily, feeling as always that cold grating against his soul that came when he was forced to acknowledge how pathetic he truly was, “We barely have enough to witness the damned thing.”

 

She sighed, rubbed a hand through her hair then down over her face, and said, “Tom, we have to have a wedding, my parents will never forgive me if I don’t and oh god, my sister… I don’t even know what she’d say.”

 

Tom suddenly wished he was drinking something stronger than tea, “It’s simple, we elope.”

 

“We are not eloping,” she said harshly, then, her eyes so bright and determined she looked down at her supplies again, “We do this and we’re doing it bloody right.”

 

“If this forces me to make Arthur Weasley my best man I can’t be held responsible for my actions,” Tom said, as a sudden, dawning, horror came upon him as he realized it was a tie between him, Minerva, or else somehow Azrael as Lily’s distant cousin.

 

Lily, having taken that unfortunate moment to sip from her own tea, choked and spluttered. Tom, naturally, had absolutely no sympathy for her whatsoever.

 

Unfortunately, the plans had moved along, a venue had been chosen, Madam Malkins approached for the dress, wedding invitations styled and formatted and ready to be sent out, term had started, and Lily had finally brought up the very sensible yet horrifying point that Tom, at some point before this wedding, would have to meet his future in-laws.

 

Tom, needless to say, had made it a point to not meet anyone’s relatives, but especially Lily’s. He’d heard of them, but not often. Lily had grown naturally distant from her parents as almost all muggleborn students did. The summer was simply not enough, and the divide between magic and the mundane was too wide to cross lightly. She spoke of them fondly, when she did talk about them, but it was clear from the way that Lily held herself and moved forward that they had become less and less a part of her life as she had moved through Hogwarts.

 

It was, perhaps, the reason that Tom had not had to meet them sooner.

 

However, more interesting than Lily’s parents was her mysterious sister. Where Lily had simply drifted from her parents, from her sister, there was a harsh and bitter break. Their relationship had always been seeded with jealousy and dislike, or so Lily said, but Hogwarts had broken something between them and Petunia had never forgiven Lily for going.

 

In a way this had been nice for Tom, as it meant that he had only ever dealt and had to deal with Lily herself. She was cut off from her former world and ties of kinship, which was perhaps what made it so easy for her to step into his domain. However, apparently, she was not quite estranged enough, because a few weeks into the start of classes she had said gravely that she had asked her parents to arrange a dinner so that they could meet Tom, and to ask Petunia and her husband to come as well.

 

Which brought Tom this fine January evening, standing on the front doorstep of an ordinary muggle suburban home in England, next to a pale and wide-eyed Lily Evans with a basket of trinkets bought from Diagon Alley in offering, wondering just why he was putting himself through this.

 

Oh yes, and also thinking he had made a huge mistake.

 

“You are not allowed to get cold feet because of Petunia,” Lily hissed, knuckles white as she gripped her package, “It’s entirely too late to back down now.”

 

“Too late?!” Tom hissed in turn, now somewhat affronted at this idea that he’d somehow passed some point of no return, “I never wanted to date you in the first place, I even gave you a very intimidating speech to drive you off.”

 

Lily looked entirely unimpressed, glancing over at him with cold and unsympathetic eyes, “Clearly, Tom, it was not intimidating enough.”

 

Considering Tom had confessed to attempted murder on multiple occasions he wasn’t entirely sure how much more intimidating it could have gotten. He was about to remark on that when the door open and there, looking normal and pleasant, were the people who must be Lily’s parents.

 

“Lily,” Lily’s mother stepped into hug her, taking the basket from her arms as her father did the same, both for the moment ignoring Tom.

 

“It’s so good to see you,” they both smiled pleasantly, with warmth and love at Lily, and then they finally glanced at Tom, taking in the sight of him piece by piece and fitting him together in his head, “And your boyfriend, you should have brought him over for Christmas when you came.”

 

For a moment, Tom thought, he perhaps measured up. His suit, while dated, gave him a strange professional and academic edge in the muggle world. His classically handsome and youthful features, also, perhaps did not hurt. For a moment, Tom was an earnest, young, and brilliant professor of some subject or another, who had caught their daughter’s eye.

 

Then Lily opened her mouth.

 

“Fiancé, actually,” this was said with the slightest, almost unnoticeable, grimace.

 

There was a long, tense, pause. A cold winter wind blew through, rattling the barren trees, and even with heating charms on his clothing Tom could not help but shiver slightly. Tom knew in this perfect singular moment, that whatever hope there had been for an amicable dinner, an amicable wedding, and an amicable relationship with his in-laws was gone.

 

* * *

 

It was, Tom thought, almost like those old Norman Rockwell paintings, the ones with the rosy, smiling, faces of this stereotypical American family that could not possibly exist. Yes like “Freedom from Want”, where this great Caucasian American family was spread out over a white table neatly set, all beaming forward at the place of honor, while the matriarch brought in a roasted turkey with the patriarch benignly smiling behind her as she set it down at the table.

 

Only, the tableau that Tom Riddle was participating in, was the version that had gone horribly wrong.

 

Tom and Lily had been seated across from Lily’s sister and her husband Vernon Dursley. Together they themselves made a strange almost comical tableau of juxtaposing features, Petunia pale, sharp, and thin while her husband was a man entirely too large and a strange red complexion bordering almost on purple. Petunia Dursley née Evans was also rather pregnant, something that had not brought softness to her features, and seemed absurdly proud of this fact.

 

She petted the bump on her stomach, smugly looking across at Lily as if she should be cowering in shame over her own flat virgin stomach, and head at a tilt so that Tom was staring up into her nostrils she blathered, “Vernon works at Grunnings you know, he’s quite successful, his boss told him the other day that he’s going places.”

 

Petunia then looked Tom over, once, then twice, as if she found him entirely lacking. Although the first she’d caught sight of him, after having been impatiently waiting in the living room for her sister to arrive, her expression had been harder to read. Something blank and distant, bitter and resigned, then bristling with anger and loathing.

 

“What does your Tom do again?” Petunia asked.

 

“Tom’s a professor at Hogwarts,” Lily said patiently, whatever she was feeling herself hidden behind a polite and pleasant mask, “I’ve told you this, Tunia.”

 

Vernon harrumphed then, rather like a walrus before glancing over Tom himself, “An egghead then, you have the look of one.”

 

“Was it the tweed?” Tom asked drily, glancing down at his muggle suit, which to be fair was perhaps close to coming out of date and unfashionable for both wizards and muggles alike. Luckily, on the wizard end, he was so appallingly muggle that no one could tell the difference.

 

Lily elbowed Tom, glaring ever so slightly, a reminder that his dry wit was neither needed nor appreciated.

 

At the other ends of the table his prospective in-laws were observing Tom critically and coldly. Clearly, they had known of him (which was mortifying and horrifying in equal measure) and had known that Lily had been seeing someone. However, apparently the recent engagement was not something they had been expecting or wanting.

 

Tom hated to say it, but he could hardly blame them.

 

“So, you’re engaged now,” Petunia sniffed, then narrowing her eyes at Tom, she asked, “A bit soon, isn’t it, Lily?”

 

“We don’t want a large wedding,” Lily said slowly, as if she was unaware what Petunia was implying, “We just want something small with family and a few close friends and…”

 

“Put the cart before the horse there, eh Tom?” Vernon cut in with a guffaw, ignoring the way his in-laws bristled at the other end of the table.

 

“No, actually,” Tom said slowly through gritted teeth, feeling for the first time in years that compulsion for mindless violence, to beat Vernon Dursley’s face in until the most talented of surgeons could not stitch it back together.

 

Vernon Dursley just smirked beneath his entirely too large mustache, winking across at Tom, as if all this good fooling around was great between young men of the world like themselves. Or rather, as if Tom had done himself a service, stepped away from his egghead tradition as it were in order to impregnate Lily and proved himself a real man in the process.

 

Lord, Tom wanted a drink.

 

The only good thing about this affair was that Lily had yet to inform them exactly how large of an age gap there was between them, and Tom, looking the way he did, looked close to Lily’s age himself. So, the worst, and more accurate, accusations had yet to come.

 

“When’s the baby due?” Lily asked, a tad awkwardly which her sister seemed to relish.

 

“Early summer,” Petunia said, lips curving into a smile that perhaps could fool itself into thinking it was happy, but could not quite fool Tom into believing it, “A little boy.”

 

“Dudley, we’re going to call him,” Vernon cut in between bites of food, “He’ll be a fine strapping boy who’ll teach all the other kids a thing or two.”

 

“Dudley Dursley,” Tom repeated dully, realizing that their son would join the likes of Bruce Banner or Clark Kent, except they would have been the kids on the playground laughing at that stupid bastard named Dudley Dursley.

 

There was another elbow in Tom’s ribs from Lily a sharp and pointed reminder for Tom to hold his barbed tongue.

 

“Dudley’s a fine British name,” Petunia said, glaring across at Tom, then sneered as she said, “You should have heard some of the names of Lily’s friends from school, why, a boy just down the street was named Severus Snape of all things.”

 

Lily, instinctively, stiffened at the name. Tom squeezed her hand and watched as she relaxed, eyes distant, likely thinking of poor Severus Snape on the island of Azkaban with his soul devoured by demons.

 

“Having been blessed with the name Tom Riddle,” Tom said with a smile, “I can’t say I have room to complain.”

 

And at that Petunia had no room to complain either, because for all that Tom’s father was undoubtedly a worthless bastard, he had given Tom an unbelievably normal name. Once, it had driven Tom mad, but now he had come to appreciate its bitter irony.

 

Of course, a Muggle Studies professor, would be named Tom Riddle.

 

Petunia’s eyes slid from Tom to Lily, pinning her to her seat, “Well, I have to say, Lily, you found yourself a charmer.”

 

“Still, it’s a shame that you couldn’t find yourself a more… normal man,” there was a distinctive pause before that word, as if something far worse was implied in it, years of barbed history that they didn’t dare to touch, then smiling with a saccharine sweetness at her husband she said, “Someone closer to home, like Vernon.”

 

Lily for a moment said nothing, clenched and unclenched her fingers, then through gritted teeth said, “I like Tom, Tunia, I’m perfectly happy with him.”

 

“Well,” Petunia paused, glanced at Tom again then Lily, “You do suit each other, although personally I always thought you’d go for greasy Severus Snape down the street.”

 

And that seemed to be enough, Lily stood, towering over the table even as her pale hands slammed on its surface, “Enough! Petunia, all I’m asking is for one dinner and one day, that is all I want from you! Can’t you even pretend to…”

 

“To what?” Petunia cut her off, also standing, one hand on her stomach and the other pointing at Lily, “Pretend you’re not a freak? Lily, I’ve been pretending for eight years that you weren’t a freak but just look at you!”

 

“Girls!” came a shout from one end of the table, their mother horrified and rising.

 

“You pretend you’re so high and mighty in that freak school of yours and then you’re going and getting knocked up by your own high-school maths teacher,” Petunia sneered, motioning to Tom with one hand as if everything vile and depraved about him could be summed up in that one gesture.

 

(And if there was one thing that could be worse about this situation, Tom thought, it was that. At the very least, if there was a reason he was still a virgin, then it was so that Lily Evans could not possibly be pregnant from him.)

 

“For God’s sake, Petunia, I am not pregnant!” Lily spat, eyes narrowing and burning through her muggle sister, “And even if I was pregnant I would never get married solely because of that!”

 

Then, although Lily did not say it, her eyes landed on Petunia’s own evidence of pregnancy, then wandered over to Vernon Dursley, an unsaid accusation hovering in the air. Petunia, without another word, threw her glass of water onto her sister.

 

“Petunia!”

 

Lily stood there stunned and wet, then, turning to look at her parents both glaring at their other daughter though perhaps not as much as they should have been, she stepped back and pushed her chair in. Then, looking down at Tom, she said, “Let’s go.”

 

Tom opened his mouth, trying to think of something to say, but then closed it realizing that whatever he could add to this situation would no doubt just be fuel for the fire. So, with that, with some awkwardness, he stood and pushed his chair in as well.

 

“Thank you, for having me over for dinner,” Lily said slowly, coldly, without inflection, “You’ll get the wedding invites by owl probably sometime next week.”

 

She opened her mouth, trying to find more words, but then failed and shut it again shaking her head. And with that she was storming out the door with Tom eagerly falling in step with her. She did not apparate right away, but rather, with hands in her pocket marched down the suburban streets.

 

“You know,” Tom said softly, “You don’t have to marry me.”

 

She stopped abruptly, whirled towards him, “What?”

 

“All this, it will all go away if you change your mind,” Tom said, nodding his head back towards the house, “As it is I think your parents will never forgive me.”

 

She laughed, a bitter resigned thing, and then smiled up at him, “Tom, I’m not sure they’ve ever really forgiven me for going to Hogwarts. I… I won’t live my life based on my parents’ approval, and certainly not Petunia’s.”

 

“That sounds rather lonely,” Tom noted but she just shook her head again.

 

“No, how can it be lonely?” She motioned towards him, “I have you.”


	38. Chapter 38

“If you’re about to accuse me of having a shotgun wedding, Minerva, I will point out that my future brother-in-law has beaten you to the punch in a manner that frankly, you can’t even hope to top,” Tom had decided, on approaching Minerva regarding the upcoming date of the wedding which really was starting to loom over him like some great unavoidable wave, that the best defense was a good offense.

 

Mostly because flat denial was no longer possible, and neither was crawling out the window of the Three Broomsticks and leaving her with the bill. Tom was officially left out of reasonable options. The trouble was… Well, if it was anyone else besides himself he’d have some truly caustic and scathing remarks along with a whole barrel filled with unflattering unspoken opinions.

 

The great irony was that this was his life, the life he would have mocked relentlessly as a child and adolescent, the kind he had thought suited to the thoughtless masses and yet the life he had somehow ended up in despite himself.

 

He had never once predicted this, the idea of being a tyrant, being minister of magic, or even failing all of this and dying tragically young and in the gutter (that dread fear of being passed over and forgotten and leading an utterly meaningless existence), had all been far more possible than becoming a humble muggle studies professor preparing for his poorly timed wedding to a woman decades younger than him.

 

All of this, of course, bringing him to Minerva’s office after office hours were done, interrupting her yet again looking over the Gryffindor quidditch roster with far more focus and attention than was healthy.

 

“Shotgun wedding?” Minerva balked, looking at the elegant invitation (Lily’s design, of course, for all of Tom’s many gifts the arts had not necessarily been among them) Tom had placed in her hand with wide eyes and a floored impression, “Tom, I don’t even know what that…”

 

“Muggle phrase,” Tom explained, remembering that Minerva likely had no real idea what a shotgun even was, “The idea is that the man who impregnates the woman with the intention of a fun one-night stand or two is then forced under threat of painful death to have some honor and marry her. Which, I will remind you, I did not do.”

 

Minerva’s mouth hung open ever so slightly, and from the look on her face even quidditch was forgotten, a feat not to be taken lightly. She then looked back at the card, at the date, then back at Tom again who was now taking this moment to look suave, sophisticated, and entirely above reproach in the seat across from her desk.

 

“Merlin, Tom, you didn’t...”  


“I didn’t,” Tom interjected over her own words with the small and rather lame explanation of, “There just seemed little point in waiting.”

 

There really hadn’t at the time, because at the time it hadn’t so much been the idea of the marriage or the wedding through his mind as what came after, the decision he had slid into, the buildup, had mostly been to saying it beyond that lingering in this in between state had seemed obnoxious and distasteful.

 

Later, with all the planning, it was still obnoxious and distasteful, and he was coming to the opinion that this was one of those things that was best done quickly and painfully so that at the very least it was done with.

 

“Little point in…” Minerva’s eyebrows lowered, she pointed him, and for a surreal moment, though they were the same age and by all rights should look the same, with his face and hers, she looked a little like a chiding and disapproving mother, “Tom, you have barely even admitted to dating the girl! And now you’re getting married?!”

 

“Time flies, doesn’t it?” Tom mused, as if it wasn’t spiraling out of control rather quickly, but instead simply the moving forward of time in a manner that neither of them could have ever suspected.

 

They just grow up so fast, don’t they?

 

And just like all those years ago, Minerva, when you pushed the right buttons in the right order, was so very easy to rile up, “That is not an appropriate response, Tom!”

 

“Yes, I do believe you’re right,” Tom said, sending her a chiding look in turn as if it was he that was terribly disappointed in her, “I believe the words you’re looking for, Minerva, are, ‘Congratulations, Tom, I’m very happy for you.”

 

She stopped, took in a deep breath then let it out again, then, slowly, too slowly, she said, “Tom, I would be happy for you, if you were not an overgrown child stuffed into the body of a fully grown man! As it is, I heartily disapprove of your choices and think that you should spend some time thinking through your actions.”

 

Ah, the tried and true method of, “Sit in the corner like a naughty little boy and think about what you’ve done!” If Tom were a student he had no doubt that by this point he would have lost fifty house points and have ten detentions in a row for good measure. Also, an irony, given that Tom had not once earned himself a detention while actually a student in Hogwarts.

 

Tom could only sigh as he looked at her, and recognize that for all their friendship, and for all the years of Hogwarts they had shared, he and Minerva lived on different planes. Because for anyone else she would have more than a point, one Tom would bow to no matter his pride or humiliation and yet…

 

And yet there were conversations that Minerva did not know about and never would, so many small and large details of his life that she would never know, and so at best the Tom Riddle she saw was a pleasant illusion.

 

Lily, for better or worse, didn’t, and Tom found that he couldn’t let that go a second time.

 

Minerva’s advice, her warnings, her frustrations with him… They did not and never would apply to the Tom Riddle beneath all of that.

 

“Well, approving of my actions or not, you are invited,” Tom said, nodding to the invitation in question, “More, due to my unfortunate circumstances of being friendless and kinless, I’m afraid that you’re my first choice for best man.”

 

Otherwise it really was down to Arthur Weasley as Tom wasn’t sure how he would pull off, let alone if he wanted, Azrael standing beside him then. As it was, there was an invitation put aside for him but that…

 

There was feeling there, and as of now, an invitation alone was as far as Tom was willing to go.

 

She gave him a truly withering and disapproving look before it slinked into one of resignation, “Sometimes, Tom, you are worse than any student I have ever had.”

 

Tom opened his mouth, about to point out the oh so recently graduated self-proclaimed marauders but then wisely shut it. Sirius Black’s murder, Severus Snape’s trial, all still hung in the air like an ever-present smog even months later. It might take years, even, for the air to truly clear.

 

So instead he simply gave that wry and charming smile, “I do try.”

 

“You would do better to try less,” Minerva snorted, turning back to her quidditch roster.

 

His smile grew a little less wry and a tad fonder as he thought back to the subject matter in question, namely, the indomitable Lily Evans, “Well, I can’t take all the credit, it does take two to tango after all. And I won’t hesitate to admit, in this case at least, I’m hardly leading the dance.”

 

Say what you would about Lily Evans, but from the beginning, even with opposition on all sides and continuing to mount, she had not once truly faltered or buckled and reached her goal against all the odds even Tom would have placed against her.

 

“Oh, please, Tom, do not go blaming her in this,” Minerva said without a shred of sympathy for Tom’s plight.

 

“Why not?” Tom asked before leaning back in his chair with a shrug and expanding, “If it were up to me I would have remained a steady and stagnant bachelor. I will give credit where credit is due.”

 

He had given her outs time and time again, more than enough reason to doubt him and turn around, even now he still kept the door ajar and yet… Yet he didn’t think she would take it, not just because of pride, foolishness, and determination but something brighter and purer than that.

 

Perhaps it was this idea though that Tom as the older party, or simply as the man, played the role of the seducer and cradle robber which Tom frankly thought did Lily a disservice. However, no one had clamored around for his opinion, just as they never clamored for his opinion on his own damn subject.

 

It had become something of a theme in Tom’s life, no one listening to a word he said on subjects in which he was actually a figure of authority.

 

“Regardless, you will come, won’t you?”

 

She sighed, looked across at him, at once fond and exasperated, “Of course I’ll come, I can’t have you standing there embarrassed and alone with only your apprentice there.”

 

“God forbid,” Tom said holding off a hand as if to stave off that unsightly future, though to be fair, having two standing on his side of the aisle was hardly better. However, even stretching his list of tolerable acquaintances as far as it could go, two it had remained.

 

He was, at best, on decent terms with most of his fellow staff members. Though Tom’s eccentricities, his own standoffish introversion, and that otherworldly air he carried with him since Ubik kept all these relationships at a healthy distance.

 

Slughorn and his relationship had chilled into a jovial false and rather strained politeness due to Tom’s swift spiral downwards from the best student Hogwarts had ever seen to the Muggle Studies Professor. Well, that, and snubbing the Slug Club invitations had not done Tom any political favors. Tom had no doubt that at his ridiculous parties he would every once in a while drop some joke about dear old Professor Riddle, the nutty professor, and you never would have believe what he’d been like when he was a student in Slytherin (yes, Slytherin, with Muggle Studies you’d think it had been Hufflepuff).

 

It would be a cold day in hell when he invited Albus Dumbledore.

 

Thus it really did dwindle down to Minerva, Arthur Weasley, Azrael, and Lily herself of the people who had any real importance in Tom’s life.

 

There was something to be said about not even running out of fingers on one hand to count off the number of people who, in even the barest capacity, could be said to know you.

 

Still, for all the dreams he had once had, all his ambitions and the clear visions of grandeur he had entertained himself, somehow (perhaps simply because this was the life he had lived), he couldn’t imagine it having been any different.

 

And two, perhaps three, at a wedding could be more than enough.

 

* * *

 

“Do you think he’ll come?”

 

They were at Tom’s house once again. For whatever reason Lily seemed to like Tom’s small sparse house in Hogsmeade far more than her own flat in London. Perhaps it was merely the amount of space, perhaps it was his basement of delightful contraband, but Tom suspected it was something more than that.

 

She would look at the walls as if searching for him inside them, in the small assortment of holiday gifts Minerva had graciously bestowed upon him through the years, the state of his silverware and china, how he stored food in the fridge, as if somewhere beneath the barren and bleak nature of his house was Tom standing in disguise.

 

Such as now, where they sat not in his basement but just at his kitchen table with two cups of tea and a stale collection of biscuits between them. Looking out of his window into the night, where, somewhere travelling with only a thought and a wish, a letter raced between one world and the next.

 

From Tom’s pen and into an emperor’s outstretched hand, while with the other, he controlled Mars and the cosmos…

 

Tom considered Lily’s question, considered the god emperor Death who had once been his friend and perhaps still was when it counted, and Azrael’s words to him that were still so poignant and bitter, “Yes, I think he will.”

 

Certainly, it’d be a ridiculous amount of effort and a bit infuriating if he’d gone through asking Tom for an invitation only to say he couldn’t come.

 

However, there was no written response, and Tom wasn’t sure he expected one. No, perhaps he expected Azrael simply to show up, disguised as Harry Evans once again and slip into the crowd with none the wiser.

 

Tom glanced over at Lily, took in the furrow of her brow, the slight frown, and the creases beneath her green eyes. Softly, he concluded out loud, “You don’t want him to come.”

 

She started, attempting to smile sheepishly, “No, no, it’s not that, he’s your friend, maybe your only real friend besides me and…”

 

She trailed off as she realized that Tom was hardly fooled and that he had played the game of hiding himself beneath layers of insincerity longer than she’d been alive. Her smile faded and was replaced by a resigned sigh as she said, “I don’t like him.”

 

Then, grimacing, gripping her tea, she added with an embarrassed flush spreading across her cheeks, “Sorry.”

 

Tom felt his lips unwillingly quirk into a smile, amused despite himself, “Lily, you do know that he’s extraordinarily unlikeable and off-putting. You’re hardly alone in that opinion.”

 

She gave a small laugh, “That shouldn’t bother me, Sev was hardly a likeable guy, and we were best friends. But it’s…”

 

She motioned with a hand as if grasping for the words, “There’s something about him that I just don’t… And he stares.”

 

“Stares?” Tom asked but she just nodded vigorously as if by that alone she was proving her own point.

 

“Yes, he stares, at you which I at least understand, but also at me. And at first, I thought it was because, well, you know but he looks at me like he’s seeing someone else where I’m standing. He… He has all these thoughts and opinions on people I know he’s never met, and he doesn’t say anything, but you can just see him thinking all these things that aren’t true and that…”

 

Tom felt something cold slink through him, because he’d known and he hadn’t, that there had been something there. Something akin to the way Azrael had always looked at him, as if measuring Tom against some unseen template forever and always, then using that template of a man who did not exist to measure the world.

 

Somewhere in his mind there was a Lily Evans who was destined to marry James Potter.

 

Lily then shook her head, “And if I’m being honest it’s not just that, that’s the… The weirder part of it, but, well, he was close to you and you can tell by how he looks at you and you at him that you know each other. Plus, well…”

 

Lily gave him a rather pointed look, unsaid being Tom’s confession to homosexuality or at least bisexuality, and his rather awkward and disastrous attempt to give it a go with his old friend the god emperor.

 

Tom couldn’t help but laugh, throwing his head back in hysterics as he even tried to imagine how that would possibly happen in this day and age, “Oh, oh no, not now, not after the first time.”

 

He had been recovering from dying and losing the ability to die, he had laid out everything on the table in a moment of aggravated despair, only to have it be spit back in his face in the worst manner he could possibly conceive.

 

“Why not?” Lily asked, face red and eyes burning, apparently having thought about this far longer than Tom himself had.

 

He just looked at her, wondering how long she’d been mulling this over, and then slowly said, “Lily, you weren’t there, but you have to understand… I will never willingly go back to that. Perhaps I’ll extend a hand in friendship once again, why not, but to be that vulnerable again?”

 

Sometimes it felt as if it had only been yesterday, that defining moment in his existence, and the cold, pitying, certainty in the god emperor’s eyes as he’d looked down at Tom. No matter how Tom’s own excuses echoed his that day, no matter the years that passed by, he was certain the answer would never really change.

 

“You said it yourself, Lily,” Tom said with a laugh and a shake of his head as he looked at her, “He doesn’t really see me, never has even in the beginning, just… Just this idea of an unflattering Tom Riddle he’s concocted in his head. One close enough to the truth in enough respects to dazzle me years ago but now…”

 

And until Lily perhaps that would have been enough, no, it was enough, because it was closer, truer, and more poignant than anyone had ever dared to be before. To the point where he had forced himself not to realize what Azrael saw when he looked at Tom. He could no longer content himself with playing whatever scripted part Azrael demanded of him.

 

“I think, that if I had given him my deathbed confession as I had you,” Tom said looking at her, “He wouldn’t have flinched, perhaps wouldn’t have blinked, but it would only be because he had expected half of it already.”

 

Perhaps it wasn’t the love confession Lily was looking for, but for whatever reason, it appeared to be enough.

 

And as if on cue, in Tom’s outstretched hand, a single plain envelope arrived with Tom and Lily’s named etched on the front in Azrael’s ghastly handwriting. Opening and laying it flat on the table was only a short sentence, “Harry Evans will be pleased to attend.”

 

Lily groaned while Tom couldn’t help but smile, “Well, I’ll be damned, looks like he’s playing the part of your estranged cousin after all.”

 

Minerva, Azrael a la Harry Evans, Arthur Weasley, and Lily’s disapproving and distasteful relatives… Well, it’d certainly be a night to remember.

 

“You know,” Tom said after a pause, “We can still elope.”

 

* * *

 

And if, in the coming months, sporadic violence and unrest in Diagon Alley as well as a renewed focus and propaganda campaign against the dangers of Ubik kept attention away from fluff stories and gossip such as eccentric Tom Riddle’s marriage to Lily Evans.

 

If even inside the walls of Hogwarts as Gryffindors and Slytherins splintered further and further apart from one another, so that Tom’s small and few wedding invitations slipped by unnoticed, then Tom was hardly one to complain.


	39. Chapter 39

The wedding itself, in retrospect and even at the time, was short and to the point and not truly worth dwelling over. It was small, as predicted, Tom’s side of the aisle comically deserted while Lily’s had been kept to close family and a few old friends if only to save Tom the embarrassment.

 

And if Severus Snape was notably absent, if there was a hole in the pews where he would have sulked and grimaced, then neither Lily nor Tom mentioned it.

 

For better or worse it was a moment, just a single simple moment, caught in the great wheel of time that moved ever onwards without regard to whatever mortals it crushed along the way. With half of Diagon Alley on fire, with the Wizengamot splitting at the seams, no one would spend much thought dwelling of a Muggle Studies’ professor’s small wedding.

 

Even if, in the clothes and guise of Lily Evans’ dweeby unknown cousin Harry, the god emperor of Ubik himself was in attendance.

 

So, the wedding, in retrospect, Tom didn’t spend much time thinking on. Probably because it had been eclipsed by the goddamn reception.

 

There was, he thought, something so odd about the mixture of people they’d brought together. First there was Lily’s family, muggle, painfully so in the case of her sister and brother-in-law. Those two looked as if they had been dragged into the place, and were now in some corner, eyes beady and suspicions and muttering to each other as they stared in horror at Arthur Weasley and his overbearing and pregnant wife Molly Prewitt (who, as you could expect, had tried desperately to make their acquaintance before settling on Lily’s dumbfounded parents as he asked them how exactly paper bills represented an amount of gold).

 

Minerva, for her own part, chatted somewhat awkwardly with Lily’s few school friends who had been invited. Settling into her old and familiar role of head of house and professor if only so she didn’t have to sulk in a corner or else badger Tom the whole night. Tom would give her this though, she was very good, you almost couldn’t tell she disapproved of this entire venture.

 

Lily then flitted like a butterfly from group, to group, and so Tom had been left on his own until Azrael himself came to join him.

 

“Tom,” Azrael, wearing a darker formal suit along with a black turtleneck which only barely succeeded in preventing him from looking like he was attending someone’s wake if only by making him look like a pretentious artiste, approached Tom with a rather thin smile, “You never told me, in the invitation, that you would be seating me with Petunia and Vernon Dursley.”

 

Tom glanced up from the punch bowl with dry raised eyebrows, taking in the small dining room that Lily had reserved for the event, and noted, “Well, there weren’t too many seats to choose from. And, naturally, I assumed that being seated near Minerva might make you uncomfortable.”

 

That and, given Azrael’s disguise (which had been explained as him being a school friend by Lily to her family and a cousin by Lily to everyone else and hoping both parties never talked to one another), it made more sense to stick him with those two. That, and, Tom didn’t deny that there were times when he was a vindictive piece of shit.

 

In some strange way the thought of watching Azrael be enforced to endure his in-laws gave Tom immense pleasure.

 

“Oh, I would much rather sit with Minerva McGonagall,” Azrael seethed, his eyes burning unnaturally beneath his thin guise of humanity, a bit too much given that Tom was reasonably sure he had yet to talk to either of the pair.

 

Of course, you didn’t have to talk to Petunia or Vernon to get the idea of them, all you had to do was look at them.

 

“You remember that she loathed you, don’t you?” Tom said under his breath, though with Minerva across the room still chatting with old students and now Lily herself, Tom doubted she could hear.

 

By Azrael’s expression he had conveniently forgotten that small fact, after a moment though he collected himself, and said, “You don’t understand, Tom, I… Would vastly prefer sitting anywhere else.”  


“Wouldn’t we all?” Tom asked rather drily as he poured himself a cup, “Be grateful you get them for the evening, I now have to endure them for eternity.”

 

Azrael grew quiet at that, distant, looking past the small reception into some memory or thought that Tom simply couldn’t see. Then, quietly, he said, “It’s so strange, even now, even when I’m in the room with you I can’t…”

 

Couldn’t imagine this moment, Tom finished for him inside of his head, something resigned and tired and irritated crawling up from Tom’s stomach and into his throat as he even thought it. Likely, well, if anyone besides Lily knew him half as well as Azrael did, they might be in similar states of shock.

 

Yet, even so, there was something exhausting about surprising this man, this thing wearing human skin, left and right. And Tom, standing here forgotten for the moment in his little corner, watching as Lily made all her rounds with a cheerful smile, he said, “That’s half your trouble, Harry, you never can.”

 

Azrael gave him a rather odd, penetrating look, a wry smile, even as he asked, “And what is that supposed to mean?”

 

Tom just smiled, looked down at the punch he was even now swirling in his hand, before looking back up, “I’ve decided that I… I don’t blame you for it, granted, I’ve never understood it or you for that matter. But it’s a bit exhausting, living up to your expectations of me.”

 

Azrael for a moment said nothing, just stood there, looking nothing like what a Harry Evans should but then he deflated and smiled once again, “Haven’t we talked about this already?”

 

“Yes, and if I remember, you gave me your drunken blessing,” Tom noted to which Azrael just threw his head back slightly and laughed.

“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” he asked, but there was a spark of wonder and merriment in his green eyes, as if he couldn’t believe his own audacity, “Even if it means sitting next to Petunia and Vernon Dursley, or something more than that…”

 

“More than that?” Tom asked, rather mockingly, “And here you were making it sound like enduring a dinner with them was an all-time low.”

 

Not that Tom entirely blamed him, his dinner with the in-laws, even a few months after the fact was still etched into his memory. If Tom had any say at all in the matter, and probably if Lily herself did, then they would be seeing as little of his sister-in-law and her family as possible.

 

Azrael’s face though darkened, as if a great cloud had passed overhead, and his smile slipped away as he said, “I am… not sure if my actions, if your actions, have consequences.”

 

Suddenly, Tom had the strangest feeling that he wasn’t drunk enough for this conversation. He swallowed some of his drink, feeling the tang of the punch and the alcohol twining together, and he said, “Haven’t you said the opposite on numerous occasions?”

 

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I have, but it… I don’t have the answers, Tom, I thought that perhaps I did but things keep changing and everything I thought couldn’t be altered isn’t safe at all. Yet, I’m still here.”

 

He looked down at his own hands, almost in wonder, as if he expected them to fade any moment now back into oblivion. He looked up and he smiled at Tom, a strangely bright and happy thing, as if the sight of his hands alone reminded him that not all was lost, “Yes, I’m still here, even with all of this.”

 

Tom could only stare, sigh, and then ask, “Do I want to know?”

 

“Oh, probably not,” Azrael said with a laugh, “I’m not sure I want to, honestly, but I suppose one of us has to appreciate the irony and better me than you.”

 

“And after all these years,” Tom said, almost in wonderment as he looked down at his ageless friend who really did look like little more than a boy even now, “I find it ironic that you still talk like a philosopher who was kicked in the head by a mule.”

 

“Live as long as I do,” Azrael said half-mockingly, “And trust me, you’ll be speaking in damned riddles too.”

 

He then smiled, gave out a short laugh even as he took a sip of his drink, “You know, you may have a point though, if I’d met me when I was eleven, or twelve, or fifteen, I would have loathed me entirely.”

 

“Of course,” Tom replied, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to loathe Azrael of Ubik, and who knew, perhaps it was.

 

“No, I really mean it,” Azrael said, now raking a hand through his hair as he continued to giggle there like an idiot, “I would have hated every bloody word out of my mouth. I was… God, people were needlessly cryptic to me so often, if this one weird bloke in black started doing it I would have lost my mind.”

 

“Then I must have the patience of a saint,” Tom said with his own smile, thinking back to those early Hogwarts days and trying to remember if it had been patience holding him back or something else entirely. Ambition bent and forged and twisted into something resembling endless patience.

 

“You had the patience of something alright,” Azrael said, probably thinking the same thing as Tom, “Well, I’ll be borrowing some of that tonight for your in-laws.”

 

Tom looked up, glanced over to where Petunia and Vernon were now glaring at the decorative spell work on the chandelier, as if simply by looking at it in disapproval it would turn into something less chaotic and more manageable, “Yes, they really are the worst, aren’t they?”

 

They, Tom suddenly realized, were everything he’d painted muggles as in his head when he was still in Hogwarts. The epitome of the bland, overbearing, thankless muggles who had to be removed from the world as one removed all forms of rubbish. He could have taken a photograph of them and used them in all of his propaganda.

 

It was almost a pity that Tom had grown up and past dreams of guerilla warfare, coup d’états, and an England built in his own glorious image.

 

Mingling ended, and dinner started, Lily looking over to him with an utterly exhausted and drained expression as she took her seat next to Tom at the main table, “You were right, we should have eloped.”

 

Tom couldn’t help the small smirk at that, as he watched everyone else in the room take their seats, Azrael cringing across from the Dursleys, Lily’s parents making their way to sit across from Minerva, Arthur, and Arthur’s red-headed wife, as well as all the rest of this strange collection.

 

“You have no right to smirk like that,” Lily huffed, “You haven’t been doing anything at all!”

 

“Oh contraire,” Tom whispered, “I kept the emperor of Ubik off your back, didn’t I?”

 

Lily spared a glance towards Azrael, now wincing as Vernon Dursley laughed, likely having just witnessed some cruelly bawdy joke that the man thought was somehow clever. Still, Lily gave him a rather perceptive look, one that looked so like the emperor in question and so different, and said, “Somehow, I don’t think that was as much of a chore for you.”

 

Arthur stood, clinking his glass with a broad and ridiculous grin on his face, “Everyone, everyone, can I have your attention please?”

 

Tom and Lily paled in unison, “Tom, why is Arthur standing?”

 

Lily turned to look at Tom, hissing under her breath, “Tom, is he giving the toast?!”

 

No, worse, he was being impulsive. Dressed in that goddamned top hat, looking a good century out of date, Arthur Weasley was proudly beaming for all to see as he was about to toast Professor Tom Marvolo Riddle, who had taught him so much about muggles.

 

Tom looked pointedly at Minerva, the woman who was supposed to give the speech, but she only gave him a rather pointed look in turn as if to say, “Well, Tom, if you decided to marry your underage student then a toast from Arthur Weasley is the least you deserve.”

 

“Oh, I am going to kill her,” Tom vowed under his breath to Lily, whose mouth was now slightly ajar in horror as Arthur started in.

 

“As you all know, we’re here for Professor Riddle and Lily Evans’ wedding, and I still can’t believe I call him Professor Riddle,” Arthur said, and the audience, at that, either laughed as if they knew exactly how he felt or looked at him like he was as mentally addled as he looked, “You know, I tried to call him Tom once, out of professionalism now that we were colleagues and… He just gave me this look, you know, that terrifying ‘I will eat your children’ look that he gives every once and a while, and he’s been Professor Riddle ever since.”

 

Lily put a hand over her now furiously blushing face and said, “I can’t watch, Tom, I can’t watch.”

 

“He’s always been like that though,” Arthur continued, motioning to Tom, who was now staring into space as if it might eat him whole and save him the embarrassment of whatever the hell this even was, “We always used to say that he was just this dragon wearing human skin, and that’s probably half the reason that there’s not too many people here for his side of the wedding… Except, you know what, even beneath all that terrifying anger and cold privacy, he’s a great guy. He taught me everything I wanted or maybe even needed to know in life and if anyone deserves someone to climb over all the walls they’ve constructed for themselves and lay siege to the fortress that’s his heart, then it’s him.”

 

Arthur, without shame, then pointed at Lily, who was busy melting into her seat, “And you know what, I know Professor Riddle didn’t make it easy, made anything but easy but that just proves how much they deserve to be together. And even if Lily’s a bit young for him or he’s secretly creepily old, even if he is terrifying and can just look at you across a room and you can feel that look alone stabbing you in the heart, I don’t care because they both look… well, happy!”

 

“So, a toast, to the bride and groom!” Arthur said, lifting his glass and everyone else along with him, and goddamn him, was Azrael smirking at that table over there? Well then, Tom would just have to kill him too!

 

“May they live long and…” Arthur started, but before he could finish that terrible reference with the world ‘prosper’ he was interrupted by slow, angry, sarcastic clapping.

 

“Bravo, Arthur, bravo, great bloody speech,” walking in from the entrance to the building, slipping in from the outside, still in his auror’s uniform and likely just having gotten off of work was none other than James Potter. Except, he didn’t look like he had only a year ago, or even half a year ago, the youthful spark to his eyes had altered into something bitter and perhaps a touch mad. He was paler than he had been, jagged at the edges, and where there had once been a hopeful and ambitious boy there was now a jaded young man standing in his place.

 

“If you don’t mind,” James said at the sudden, awkward, and stifling silence, “I thought I’d come and give my own bloody speech.”

 

James glanced at Lily, something colder and harder all at once entering his eyes as he looked at her, the aftermath of something broken, “Sorry, I would have said I was coming, but somehow, I think my invitation may have gotten lost in the mail.”

 

Tom moved to stand but Lily held down his arm, whispering in his ear, “Just let him say it, Tom.”

 

James watched the scene with a mix of disgust, pity, and disappointment as he said, shaking his head almost in awe, “Lily, even Snivellus would have been better than him. You really have a talent for picking the worst of them.”

 

“Is that why you’re here, James?” Lily asked, looking back at him, but James just shook his head.

 

“You never listened to me then,” he noted, his lips twisting into a bitter smile as he stared down at his hands, “I didn’t think you’d listen to me now… Except, I guess this is the last chance, even if I missed the wedding, I can still tell you what he is!”

 

Here he pointed in accusation at Tom, eyes burning, “You don’t have to marry me, Lily, but for Merlin’s bloody sake, don’t marry this rat bastard!”

 

He then turned to look at his captive audience, laughing, “That’s what he is, don’t you know it? A true, blue, rat bastard of a human being, always managing to wriggle his way out of trouble and just barely escape what’s coming to him. He did it on Mars, if you’ll all take a moment to remember. Disappears for months going god only knows where, maybe even banging the Ubik emperor for all we bloody know, shows back up later, has a pretty bloody serious fight with Orion Black, and then he goes and gets himself a job at Hogwarts for decades! There, he whispers in Snape’s ear, and Sirius is dead and Snape in prison and he gets off scot free! No one even looks in his direction. And you know what, forty years ago, I’ll bet you he had some hand in, and I don’t know how, but I bet he had some hand in the chamber of secrets fiasco! Because do we really think Hagrid, good, kind, Hagrid, was a murderer?!”

 

James didn’t even seem to notice how his audience looked at him, in horror, pity, and fascination, as if he was a one-man show of a slow descent into madness. He also didn’t notice how Minerva McGonagall paled at the mention of the chamber, how her fingers tightened as they laced together, how she gave Tom a hopeless and imploring look.

 

James whirled back to Lily, stalking closer to their table until his hands were slamming down on the white table cloth, “He’ll destroy you, Lily, it’s what he does, it’s what he does bloody best. He enters our schools, our world, and he picks it apart from the inside without any of us even noticing a thing. I bet there are hundreds, thousands, of more things he’s done that we’ll never know about. And Merlin, Lily, whatever you think of me, I won’t let you become the next name on his bloody list!”

 

Lily just looked back at him, not even twitching, not even moving a muscle and yet for all that she didn’t move she almost seemed to glow with this unseen confidence in herself and her choices, and she said, “James, if you’ve ever really cared about me, then maybe you can trust me to make my own decisions.”

 

“Your own decisions?!” James balked but Lily cut him off, eyebrows lowering and expression hardening.

 

“You can trust me to say that I know more about Tom Riddle than you do or ever will, and that even if there was a list, that it won’t be my name on it next,” She stood, reached out and took James hand in hers, squeezed it and said quietly, “I’m sorry, you know I’m so sorry about what happened to Sirius, about Severus but I… This is my life James, and my life doesn’t belong in that story.”

 

She then smiled over his shoulder, at everyone, “Sorry, everybody, but I think I’m going to see that James gets home.”

 

And just like that, the pair of them apparated out, Lily in her wedding gown and James in the auror’s uniform that he might have chosen to wear at his own wedding, leaving Tom in his groom’s suit and his empty wedding behind with all his gaping wedding attendees.

 

Tom sighed, closed his eyes for only a moment, then decided that if it was going to be his wedding he might as well enjoy it. He moved to the cake, cut himself a slice then one for Lily, then, turning to his aghast audience asked, “So, with that, who wants cake?”


	40. Chapter 40

“I can’t believe my own wife of twenty minutes ran off with James bloody Potter.”

 

The wedding, shortly after James’ manic crashing and Lily’s disappearance, had wound up awkwardly. Lily was the glue that held the thing together and without her Lily’s family quickly made their exit after receiving cake (making sure to give Tom rather cold and unimpressed looks on their way out of the reception hall), Lily’s school friends were next, then Minerva, Arthur and his own wife, until all that was left was Tom and the emperor of Ubik.

 

Azrael had put his glasses away leaving him looking less boyish and gawky and more that familiar alien presence he had always had. Together they sat at the main table, devouring the substantial portions left of the wedding cake behind, as well as what remained of the multi-colored champagne while they waited for Lily’s return from God even knew where.

 

“Well, no, this is my life,” Tom corrected as he washed down sickly-sweet vanilla cake with another glass of champagne, “Of course something like this would happen. Something like this always happens.”

 

Life, after all, made it a habit of mocking Tom at every interval while simultaneously spitting in his shocked face. How else had he ended up Muggle Studies professor let alone assistant to Orion Black ambassador to Ubik.

 

Azrael laughed, perhaps a little too drunkenly with a red flush on his cheeks, but sounded sober enough as he asked, “Come on, Tom, you don’t believe that.”

 

No, he didn’t. It was taking time but that was not… It wasn’t surprising. Tom would have thrown James Potter out of the wedding and into the gutter, but Lily was not Tom, and though they were hardly friends she wouldn’t leave him in that kind of state. No, there would be words, about Lily’s independence (and Lily had a lot of words to say on that particular subject) and how James could not make decisions for her no matter the consequences of them, perhaps even about Tom and that there was more to him than James Potter could see…

 

Enough to say, that it could take an hour or even two.

 

“He shouldn’t have said that,” Azrael suddenly said, looking slightly out of sorts, pale fingers tapping impatiently against the white lace table cloth while he peered at Tom as if he was searching for something in Tom’s face.

 

“Said what?”

 

“James Potter, his speech,” Azrael said drily, but with an undercurrent of real anger there, “He had no right to come in here and just…”

 

“Well, in his defense,” Tom said with a shrug and another bite of cake in his mouth, even though he wasn’t even sure why at this point he was eating the bloody thing as it was enough sugar to make a fly vomit, “Most of it was at least mostly true.”

 

He had gone to Mars, disappeared for months, then returned only to a bitter reunion with Orion Black. He had suggested Severus Snape murder Sirius Black and hadn’t been exactly disappointed when Sirius met his unfortunate end. And he had been the one who had, once upon a time, opened the Chamber of Secrets and let Rubeus Hagrid take the fall for it.

 

“No,” Azrael said shaking his head and pouring down another drink, “No, Tom, not like how he said it, not with that… I could say something about it if I were so inclined, Lily could say it, but James has no idea what on earth he’s even talking about.”

 

Undoubtedly true, but then James Potter rarely had any idea what he was talking about, he almost made it a point to be an ignorant and arrogant ass as if this was a part of his charm. Charm that, given everything, actually worked rather well as Tom could count the people he knew on one hand that loathed James Potter as much as he did.

 

Still, Tom turned his attention to Azrael, took in his dark feathered hair, his hunched boney shoulders and the way he stared moodily into his drink. Tom couldn’t help but comment, “You’re taking this quite seriously, my friend.”  


“I… Keep expecting the best of him,” Azrael finally said after too long a pause, quietly, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was saying it either. He sighed and rubbed a pale hand through his hair, causing it to stand on end in a way that was quite similar to Potter’s, “And I know why he’s acting the way he is, I know that he is… grieving desperately. All the same I always expect… so much more of him.”

 

“That’s always your trouble,” Tom said, rather dismissively, the alcohol dulling the hurt of the words, “You expect things of everyone. Me, Lily, James Potter… What I want to know though, is why does he get such a positive preconception and I get such a negative one? You do know he’s an ass, don’t you?”

 

Azrael laughed and shook his head, “I’ve figured it out, thank you very much, Tom.”

 

Tom was about to elaborate on this, point out specifically that this was not a new occurrence for James Potter, then stopped and looked at their surroundings with a laugh, “Why is it, Azrael, that we always end up getting bloody drunk together after terrible things?”

 

“What?”

 

“This, the trial… You’re turning me into an alcoholic,” Tom said with a bitter laugh, though that hardly stopped him from another slice of cake and another drink. Everything was finally starting to get delightfully fuzzy, a little distant, and easier to sit here with old friends who smiled warmly for all the sadness that never quite went away in their eyes.

 

With the slight fuzz of alcohol, it was always easy to slip back into the old roles of when he was still in Hogwarts, or even when they were still on Mars before the end.

 

“You’re turning yourself into one,” Azrael scoffed, looking more like a petulant schoolboy than an emperor and death itself in mortal disguise, “I’m hardly force-feeding it to you, am I?”

 

“Besides, if anyone, you’re driving me to drink what with your sitting me next to Vernon and Petunia Dursley,” Azrael spat, taking a large gulp after that and shuddering, “You’d think after so much time I’d manage to repress all those memories but then they just come flooding right back!”

 

“They really are the worst, aren’t they?” Tom asked, not even bothering to touch on the rest of Azrael’s usual cryptic nonsense.

 

“Well, I’m glad that you think I can better commiserate with you now. Except I hate to tell you, but Tom I was fully aware of what they were even before you put me at that table,” Azrael said with a huff, “We could have drunk over your deplorable in-laws without my having to sit through that.”

 

“Yes, but did you know they’re going to name their first-born son Dudley?” Tom asked, because that was perhaps the most important part, and he was sure that they’d even told what Petunia and Vernon Dursley had thought was Lily’s school-friend.

 

“Strangely enough, yes, I did,” Azrael looked as disturbed by that as Tom felt, because Dudley Dursley would not have been something he’d have guessed.

 

“Well, we can’t all be alarmingly prescient,” Tom said with another shrug and another round of eating cake, “And besides, who else was I supposed to stick them with? Or stick you with in your Harry Evans get up.”

 

As always, he looked down at himself, even though now he was looking at least slightly better without the glasses and the schoolboy outfit, “What’s wrong with my…”

“Everything, Azrael, everything is wrong with it,” Tom said with a sigh, shaking his head and wishing he could repress all memory of it, “It’s like somebody once told you how to dress like a normal fifteen-year-old boy and you decided to follow them to the letter with disastrous results.”

 

At first, he looked as if he was going to retort something rather vicious to that, probably that he thought he looked very good and perhaps that others at the wedding had as well, but then he laughed. It was long, hard, and perhaps overly cheerful as if Tom had said something truly hilarious. He went so far as to collapse on the table and pound his hand repeatedly against it.

 

Finally, when he died down all he could do was smile and look at Tom and say, “You know, I have missed you Tom. Strange as it seems you were the only one who… You’re right, more than you know, you’re right. Everyone else is slightly more comfortable with Harry Evans, if they’re comfortable with him at all, but with me… I’ve always appreciated that you’ve found me not only more interesting but also more real when I don’t wear any of the masks. No one ever did that before you or since for that matter.”

 

Tom scoffed, looked away for a moment, back towards the cake and the two wedding figures on it, “If you missed me so much why didn’t you…”

 

Azarel cut him off with a laugh and a wry accusation of, “Why didn’t you, Tom?”

 

Why hadn’t he done anything about it? Hadn’t they been over this before? Hadn’t he told him and…

 

Tom let out a sigh, turned once again to stare at Azrael, and he said with a too stiff shrug, “I suppose it takes two to tango, Azrael.”

 

In other words, both had at least some small hand in the decades long silence. And what would have happened if Tom had stayed? If he hadn’t shown himself out the front door, hobbling back to his quarters. He would have defected and never returned to Orion, likely been presumed dead or murdered. Orion would have done something unbearably stupid and England would still be where it was now. Tom would have stayed and he and Azrael would have… Tom didn’t know. Perhaps, in time, Tom would have worn him down and something would have come of it except then how would the people up there have viewed him. How would Tom have viewed himself?

 

Here he was only a Muggle Studies professor, but dammit it was his, and up there he would have always been in the shadow of Azrael or else his past. He would have had to forsake every sliver of his pride, however much that was worth and…

 

And even then, he hadn’t been able to live with that kind of future.

 

No, for them, as terrible and strange as it was, there were no might have beens.

 

“Do you think about your wife often?” Tom asked him, not entirely sure why, only that he never had and had always wondered both at the time and years later. Azrael paused, stiffened for a long painful moment, then shook his head solemnly.

 

He looked both so terribly human and inhuman all at once, an old man inside a young man’s body, as he said, “No, not often.”

 

Tom didn’t know if he believed that or not. Certainly, he thought, something about Azrael’s past seemed to consume him constantly and Tom had always thought that a part of that was his mysterious wife. Yet, perhaps that was only a small part of it, perhaps Azrael had been in his own way as indifferent and callous with her as he had been with Tom.

 

Hadn’t that been his warning, that things with his wife had not worked out? That Azrael had had too much baggage for any man or woman to be expected to handle?

 

Still, he asked, “What was she like?”

 

Azrael laughed and for a moment looked fond as he let memories overtake him, “Courageous, brave to the point of willful stupidity, a bit of a tomboy with more than a bit of a temper. Except… I don’t know if I really knew her, even in the beginning. She… She’d known of me before I even knew she existed, and I think so much of her energy was spent shaping herself into what she thought I wanted while I did the same. I… I loved her family more than I loved her. That’s the horrible truth of the matter. I was an orphan and I had wanted to be a part of that family ever since I first met them and she was the only daughter. She was… I don’t know if I thought it then, or if it was later, but I remember thinking that she was the easiest way to solidify my place among them.”

 

Well, that was…

 

Tom was speechless, only that he felt suddenly juxtaposed and out of place, dressed in his best for the wedding but eating wedding cake and drinking champagne and hearing callous human details from a man who was anything but human.

 

Azrael shook his head, looked over at Tom with a bitter and self-deprecating smile, “Don’t worry, Tom, your marriage, even with the bride running out the door before the reception is done, even with the age difference and the lack of approval, is already doing fabulously in comparison to mine. And everyone, Tom, approved of my wedding.”

 

Tom swallowed, opened his mouth then closed it, and couldn’t think of anything to say at all because it was… True.

 

There was a loud crack and Lily Riddle née Evans appeared alone out of nothingness. Her hair was now undone and tumbling down her shoulders, but the wedding dress was still there along with the veil, and when she looked over, even with Azrael and the demolished cake, the first thing she did was look at Tom and smile.

 

Tom stood, left Azrael and his dark past to the side for a moment and stepped towards her, “I would have waited, Lily, but you and James Potter were taking far too long…”

 

“So, in the meantime, you decided to get drunk on champagne and cake with the emperor of Ubik,” Lily said with a slight frown, now looking past Tom towards Azrael who was giving her an ever so slight, and ever so fond, smile.

 

“It’s an acquired past-time,” Tom said, “And besides, you missed the reception.”

 

Lily flushed, opened her mouth, closed it, then said, “Sorry, I…”

 

“Will he be coming back?”

 

Lily shook her head.

 

“Then I don’t care.”

 

And he didn’t, it didn’t matter that the reception was a disaster, it didn’t matter what she’d gone and said to James Potter, she was here now, and he was here now, and that was all that Tom had really wanted from a wedding in the first place.

 

And Azrael, like a wisp of smoke, drifted and disappeared in the wind until there was nothing left of him but a memory. The God emperor, without a word, returning to his cold Martian kingdom and the memory of a wife he had tried and failed to love and who had tried and failed to love him.

 

* * *

 

It was… not how he pictured it, the event or the aftermath of staring up at the golden runes of Ubik tracing the ceiling of his basement. They were on a conjured bed, staring up at these false foreign stars that Tom himself had painted through will and magic, and curled up next to him he could see that steady hum of golden time looping around Lily.

 

It was something softer than he’d expected, passionate yes, but tenderer than he had allowed himself to believe. Of course, maybe that was why he had avoided it so long. As much of a mudblood as he was he wasn’t ugly, there had been opportunities he just…

 

Perhaps he’d been too much of a romantic to ever consider the notion. Of sex as a purely physical act, he’d known that it would have only made him emptier than he already was.

 

Once he’d pictured it with Azrael, on the glowing fields of Mars away from all others, afterwards he hadn’t pictured it at all, and now…

 

“Hey, Tom?”

 

Tom looked down at Lily who was now looking at him with the reflection of the runes caught in her green eyes, similar, perhaps, to how the stars and flowers would have caught in Azrael’s eyes on Ubik, “Yes?”

 

Her toes curled against his bare calves, but her eyes kept drifting upwards towards the shining runes, “How did you make all of this?”

 

All of this, his whole secret world…

 

“Years of practice,” he said at first and then, with a smile looking down at her acknowledged what he’d never said aloud when he’d made this room so many years ago, “And years of wretched loneliness I suppose.”

 

“Loneliness?” Lily asked.

 

Tom just nodded, staring up past the books and the golden waves of runes and into the dark surface of the ceiling, “This was… A poor attempt at reclaiming my place in the world.”

 

Tom looked back down at her though, took in all that she was for a moment. She was young, not as young as she once was but still so much younger than him. Even so, time looped about her lazily, like a calm river but also like a golden noose. One day it would wrap around her neck and claim her…

 

“Tom?”

 

Tom smiled, leaned back into her, wrapping fingers in red hair, “I couldn’t make something like this now if I tried.”


	41. Chapter 41

It went so quickly, this strange thing that Tom Riddle called life. When he had been young and bitter in that orphanage, still waiting for the chance to claim his place in the world and sharpening his oyster knife, it had always seemed to crawl.

 

The summers had lasted for eternities.

 

Except now, now when time had stopped for him and he had that instinctual gut knowledge that there would always be another sunrise for Tom Riddle though he had no explanation for it, it seemed to move too quickly.

 

With Lily’s hand in his, time didn’t march or slip through his numb fingers, it flies. He blinked, and months are gone but he was standing still, happy for once, and yet the shadow of dread hanging over him as he knew that all things but Tom Riddle must end someday.

 

She seems so young but already months were gone, and the clock was ticking closer to midnight.

 

And at the wedding he hadn’t minded, still couldn’t bring himself to look at that fact too closely, except that very Fall it seemed to all but slap him in the face.

 

“I’m sorry, Lily, could you repeat that?”

 

It was the end of November, the end of term quickly approaching and with it a general restlessness among the student body as exams and the winter holidays approached. That, along with the over decorated hallways, the constant caroling, and the insistence that even Tom be in good cheer had to make it one of Tom’s least favorite times of year.

 

Even in the muggle world, he’d always loathed the Christmas season.

 

Lily herself was in more festive robes than himself, a blasphemous mix of green and red that complimented her features but not her Hogwarts house, and as usual had parked herself in his office when she’d gotten a spare moment or else had to grade third year papers.

 

Except today the pile of Potions essays that Slughorn had foisted onto her had been abandoned on Tom’s desk, and instead she was staring at him, grinning at him in a way she hadn’t smiled at him since their wedding.

 

She repeated herself, smile growing impossibly wider as she leaned forward towards his desk, “Tom, we’re pregnant!”

 

We, Tom thought as he blinked again, we wasn’t the right word. Tom, after all, was very much not pregnant and incapable of getting pregnant even if he wanted to. Of course, that wasn’t really in the spirit of the expression, this was supposed to make him feel more involved or something to that effect, as if his participation in this group effort hadn’t quite been enough…

 

However, he didn’t say that, instead he repeated slowly as if he couldn’t quite understand the word himself, “Pregnant.”

 

“Yes, Tom, that’s what happens when you have unprotected sex enough times,” Lily said, now growing irate and rather unamused, then a flicker of doubt, “Are you… Do you not want…”

 

“No, no,” Tom said, waving his hands defensively and forcing that good old charming smile that he had cast aside so many years ago, “No, I’m very happy, Lily, simply shocked. I’ve always been an orphan so the idea of a family is…”

 

That wasn’t a lie, either.

 

He had so often imagined, reveled in delusions of grandeur, seizing his ancestral history and continuing the legacy of whatever family had produced him. The line, somehow in his mind, had started and stopped with Tom Marvolo Riddle.

 

With immortality on the mind, more, there had been no thought to extending Tom Riddle’s legacy from his own point let alone children.

 

He looked up, Lily was still staring at him, now in a softer and more wounded concern that told Tom he had drifted entirely too far from this conversation and the present moment. The present moment…

 

With those words time, he realized, was not simply not standing still or moving forward but things would progress rapidly. Life would move past Tom, perhaps try to drag him along with it, but soon enough he would fall behind as Azrael had undoubtedly fallen behind.

 

He wiped at his face in exhaustion, forced his smile to be brighter (and lord how long had it been since he had smiled like this), “We’ll have to go to Saint Mungos, that is what we do, isn’t it?”

 

Tom honestly didn’t know, hadn’t thought to ask or pay attention, that was how it was done in the muggle world and the wizarding world always followed a rough equivalent. Lily though nodded, making it clear that Tom had at least guessed that much correct.

 

God, he wasn’t ready to be a father.

 

He didn’t think he’d ever be ready to be a father, how could he when he’d had such expectations for his own which had never come to fruition? And wouldn’t it be embarrassing, having Tom Riddle the Muggle Studies professor for a father? Tom would have loathed himself as a human being, let alone having him for a father…

 

What if it turned out exactly like him?

 

What could Tom possibly say to him, to her, to make the child not turn into another miniature Tom Riddle set out to prove himself or herself with parseltongue at their disposal.

 

He kept smiling, the whole day he kept smiling, smiling as he and Lily planned to visit Saint Mungos that weekend and visit the mediwitch and midwife. Smiling as he taught his afternoon classes and terrified his students who were all too often used to seeing Tom’s caustic temper and unimpressed dismissal of fools. Smiling even as Albus Dumbledore walked up to him and wished him a happy yuletide season and that he’d never seen Tom in such good cheer.

 

Which was how, after sneaking out of Lily and his bed at the time only the drunks and insomniacs were out and about, he found himself hissing up at the sky with embarrassment and desperation, “Azrael, Death, get your bloody cryptic ass down here before I do something I regret!”

 

For a moment he was simply staring at the stars, brighter in the lamplit wizarding village of Hogsmeade than in the fluorescent muggle London, a cool night wind blowing through his air and carrying the certainty that someone, somewhere, was listening.

 

And perhaps he was, but all the same, Tom did not need an ear he needed…

 

He needed him in person, he needed him here now, and goddammit he had never admitted that in decades so the least he could be granted that much. To say what, Tom didn’t know, perhaps to ask how Azrael had once done it or not done it with his temperamental estranged wife and children. Perhaps to ask how it had come to this, to ask if he’d ever suspected it would come to this when Tom had never seen it.

 

Perhaps it was simply that…

 

It was simply instinctual, once even when Tom had hated the world and every one in it, turning to him would have been instinctual. He never would have questioned it, hadn’t, when his world had turned upside down and suddenly, he had nowhere left to turn. When Voldemort had crumbled in his fingertips before he could even whisper it.

 

It was cold, there was a bite of the oncoming winter in the air and standing outside in the dark with his wife still asleep Tom felt like a fool.

 

Even more so than usual, that was.

 

He should go in, he’d figure it out, whatever it was that still had him panicked and dazed. He’d move forward, as he always did, and time would move on and in eight months he would be a father as well as a husband.

 

And it was goddamn cold outside.

 

He didn’t move, just leaned against the side of his home, breathed in the night air and continued to wait. For Azrael, inspiration, or else perhaps the dawn with nothing resolved at all. Sometimes he felt as if he had been waiting since that day on Mars when everything and nothing had changed, when Tom had suddenly been… Not quite Tom Riddle anymore.

 

“Is everything alright?”

 

Tom looked up and there he was out of nowhere, without even a crack of apparition, looking panicked and desperate as he stepped towards Tom, “Is Lily alright? Do you need help?”

 

Ah, right, Tom hadn’t called of his own volition except to mail a letter for a wedding he had been certain Azrael would not attend. For him to reach out, it must have sounded like a bloody emergency.

 

Tom couldn’t help but smile, an odd, amused, and bitter thing and repeated Lily’s words to the emperor of Mars who had somehow found the time to abandon whatever important things he was doing to listen to Tom panic, “We’re pregnant.”

 

Azrael blinked, blinked again, looking just as stunned and confused as Tom had felt earlier in the day.

 

“We’re pregnant?” he repeated oddly, as if he too was very unsure of that pronoun.

 

“Lily’s pregnant,” Tom corrected, shoving his hands into his pockets and oddly feeling somehow more human than he had all afternoon, “I’m the father, at least, I’m very certain I’m the father.”

 

No, that was a lie, he was entirely certain. For one thing Lily barely had the time to conduct an affair, more, despite her running off with Potter during his wedding he had never doubted her fidelity. As odd and alarming as it was Lily loved him, despite everything he was, she loved him and it…

 

Well, that was part of the reason he was standing out here with a Martian emperor he had summoned from the depths of space.

 

At first, he expected Azrael to give him a truly odd look, as if Tom had gone and lost his mind, and then demand Tom not waste his time as he had more important things to do. Tom hardly would have blamed him, had their positions been reversed Tom likely would have done just that. Of course, were their positions reversed Tom would have been far more bitter regarding Azrael’s marriage to his student and would likely never have turned down the twenty something year old god in the first place.

 

So, perhaps it wasn’t an apt comparison.

 

However, that wasn’t what Azrael did.

 

For a moment he simply stared, eyes large and wide towards Tom, looking as if his world and everything he’d once believed in had slipped through his fingers and shattered on the ground beneath his feet.

 

Then he laughed, a sound that was at first surprised, then bitter, and then something joyous yet tinged with the memory of what could have been. Tom had nearly forgotten the sound of his laughter, the true sound of it and not the small chuckles won with far too much effort. That, or his unbridled smile, which had all too often been dimmed by nostalgia or some irony that Tom couldn’t see.

 

Azrael leaned against the wall, turning his back against the bricks so that he too was staring up into the night with Tom, leaning shoulder to shoulder with him.

 

Finally, the edge of that smile still on his lips, the emperor of Ubik said, “You’ll be glorious, Tom.”

 

“Glorious,” Tom balked with his own desperate laugh, “Isn’t that a little extreme, Azrael?”

 

Especially for a man who had no father, no mother, for his own and had turned down so very many roads best left untraveled.

 

“No, of course it isn’t,” Azrael said before laughing and shaking his head at his own foolishness, cutting Tom off before he had a chance to rebut the statement, “I know, I know, we’ve been through this song and dance before. I see something you don’t, can’t perhaps, and you don’t believe me and have every reason not to.”

 

“If life is a game then I’ve…” Tom trailed off, considered that statement, then admitted, “Well, I haven’t failed, per se, but I haven’t won either.”

 

“No, Tom, I rather think you have,” Azrael disagreed, “Even if you never believe me.”

 

For a moment they stood in companionable silence, the night quiet, not yet lit up by the Christmas lights that were soon to wind their way through every rooftop and hedge in the village. Still, on this bleak night at the end of November, it was beautiful in a way that is not reminiscent of Ubik at all.

 

Yet, somehow, Tom’s memory was stirred all the same. Of those nights spent in glowing Martian fields with the stars over their head and that great faux-ancient city miles and miles behind them.

 

With a smile Tom then noted, “You wish she had married James Potter, don’t you?”

 

It would have been easier, for all that Tom didn’t believe it was possible. Instead perhaps he could imagine a man, a boy, like James Potter. Someone younger, handsome, well off and going so many places in the world and none of them strange or dangerous.

 

Yes, it would have been easier, simpler…

 

“No,” Azrael’s quiet voice broke the silence, one that had stretched longer than it should have if the answer required no thought at all, “No, I… I’ve said it before, Tom, I gave you my blessing and I meant it. But you don’t really need it, you love your wife, you talk to your wife, and your child won’t be anything like me at all.”

 

“No, they could be like me,” Tom said with a frown as the words fell out as if he had been meaning to say them ever since Lily had come to him in his office, “And I… I’ll be like what you must have been with your wife, always lingering and never aging, with so many holes in my past that could never possibly be filled.”

 

He paused, took a breath, and said, “I’m sorry, you have better things to do than this, I have better things to do than this…”

 

“Oh, believe me,” Azrael said with a laugh, “It does me good to get away, I should do it more often, it gets so… tiring at times.”

 

His expression became more serious and suddenly he looked exhausted, more exhausted than Tom would have expected, so that he seemed aged beyond his teenage face. It wasn’t simply his eyes that looked old this time but the shadows beneath them as well.

 

“It’s changed, Tom, since you’ve been there,” he said quietly, “I never wanted to be a king, let alone an emperor, I never wanted any of this at all. Yet, all the same, I knew I couldn’t shirk my responsibilities this time and…”

 

“It’s changed?” Tom prompted, his thoughts suddenly far from his own domestic problems which were hardly problems at all, only a paradigm shift of sorts. Of course, he knew it had changed, if only because he hadn’t had his head that much in the sand and had enough muggle news to see what went in to Ubik and what came out of it.

 

From Britain’s perspective, for whatever that was worth, yet all the same Ubik had always remained curiously untouched in his memory.

 

“It’s been over twenty years, Tom” Azrael said, now running a hand through his hair and lost in his own thoughts, “Many things change, and for all that I try to maintain the peace and keep the balance melting pots are complicated. Entire peoples get lost in the shuffle while others forget their place and believe they’re more equal than others, conspiracies and plots grow like fungus out of sight and everyone questions my name yet won’t let me step to the side either, I am expected to be both impartial and magnanimous in everything I do…”

 

He trailed off, swallowed and closed his eyes before a more familiar self-deprecating smile moved across his lips, “This is hardly your problem though, Tom. Be happy your dreams of grandeur were never realized, the reality is hardly any fun.”

 

And if Azrael could be an immortal king, Tom thought to himself, then surely Tom could be something of a father. It wasn’t quite the reassurance he had been looking for, but it was some sort of reassurance all the same.

 

“That said,” Azrael added as he brushed himself off, preparing to leave, “My offer still stands, as always. If things go… sideways, then you are welcome with open arms, no matter what they say about it.”

 

“Thank you,” Tom said but Azrael gave him a pointed look, as if Tom was brushing this off far too easily, as an offer Azrael was obligated to make but never expected to have to live up to.

 

“I mean it,” he said, stepping away from Tom as he did so to look out at the village as if he was seeing far into its future, “I suspect that things may get worse. When they do, if they do, remember what I said.”

 

And all Tom could do was nod slowly, turn back to move inside to where Lily waited, and respond, “I will.”

  

* * *

 

It was a daughter, and perhaps predictably, Tom insisted they name her Harry. Lily had thought a flower per her family’s tradition, but Tom had promised her a Rose or Violet for the next one only if this one was Harry. Lily didn’t have to know it was because Tom was a contrary bastard who would name his own daughter to get back at the Martian emperor for an offhand and bizarre comment.

 

It suited her though, he thought, even though she looked nothing like Azrael but was instead an odd mix of Tom and Lily, it suited her.

 

The girl didn’t smile, she didn’t do much at all, she was so small and fidgeting only slightly as she looked at the world with bleary eyes yet all the same Tom felt… He wasn’t quite sure, only that he didn’t think he had felt this way before, and that he suspected the exhausted and smiling Lily felt much the same way.

 

And it didn’t matter that Lily’s parents, Tom’s in-laws, had only made a brief stop in the magical hospital for her sake if not for the sake of the memory of the daughter they couldn’t hold. Petunia, Vernon, and little Dudley Dursley undoubtedly born already were nowhere in sight and Lily hadn’t bothered to ask her parents where they were.

 

That almost inevitable estrangement of a muggleborn from their family was seeping through the air like a familiar and overpowering scent and Tom wondered how Lily hadn’t recognized it for herself yet. They were unwitting orphans, each and every one of them who hadn’t sprung from tradition and bloodlines, though Tom didn’t know how many would realize it.

 

Tom likely would never see his sister-in-law’s family ever again, and he didn’t wonder if, in time, it would be the same with his mother and father-in-law.

 

Yet, somehow, he thought as he looked down at the daughter he’d never expected, never would have wanted as a younger man, and hadn’t truly believed in even as Lily’s body had changed with her growth, he couldn’t mind.

 

No, he looked down at her, at Lily, and he thought that the younger Tom Riddle had had to earn this before he could ever understand how such small things could inspire such…

 

All the feelings he had once thought escaped him entirely.

 

Still, as he looked down at his daughter, he could feel time flying.


	42. Chapter 42

Tom should have taken Azrael’s suspicions more seriously, or, rather he should have remembered what the suspicions of a god amounted to.

 

Tom morosely or cynically predicting the downfall of a nation was one thing, Tom knew only what he knew, and for better or worse he would not deny that he was a man of his time. He could guess, make plans, but as most people did, he found himself going about his daily life and making only small adjustments here and there as life moved past him.

 

He became a professor, he got married, he had a child, and he never left the United Kingdom. In that Tom Riddle was not so different from the likes of Arthur Weasley or even James Potter. James Potter, who in a few years’ time, married one of the more tolerant pureblood heiresses whom his father and mother had no doubt approved of.

 

Perhaps they could have approved of Lily, the Potters liked to think of them as protectors of the unfortunates and what better a status symbol than Lily Evans the brightest witch of her generation, beautiful, and hopelessly muggleborn. However, the pureblood families were all closely intertwined and, even had Lily entertained the notion of becoming serious with James, Tom still wondered.

 

It was hard to see outside of your little moments, to be able to look past yourself and say, “Ah ha! That was what I missed!” Tom imagined that even in retrospect, even with years upon years of retrospect, he could never find those tiny crucial moments.

 

The consequences of them, certainly, but those subtle moments which paved the path to them? That was harder.

 

Azrael, though, he was not like Tom. In some sense Tom had the feeling that the man was always looking backwards on life. Always seeing Tom Riddle’s childhood, Britain, and everything else from the other end. As if he was Merlin, in “The Once and Future King”, living in time backwards so that he was always saying goodbye when you were first saying hello.

 

Tom should have remembered that.

 

After all, it was him who had said he suspected it would get worse.

 

Suspected, he hadn’t suspected anything, he’d damn well known it.

 

Five years later and disco was blissfully fading from the muggle world, Tom Riddle was still the Muggle Studies professor, Lily working as a potions master for Saint Mungo’s, their daughter was five-years-old, and London was burning every other week.

 

But that was the trouble, when patches of Diagon Alley were perpetually burning, when the small sprouting muggle district had been flattened time and again until their owners simply threw their hands in the air and set out for some other less volatile business, you got used to it.

 

You took your daughter and your wife to the other parts of town, the central street of Diagon Alley, and you learned to watch the shadows in every alleyway. You started abandoning your pride and your muggle suits and hoped that you were not as distinctive as you had once insisted on being.

 

And it simply became life, another small facet in the only time you would ever have.

 

And sometimes it took your young wife pointing it out for you to remember that once, perhaps, things had been different.

 

“Jesus, Tom, what happened?”

 

Tom breathed out in relief as well as exhaustion, wiping soot and purple spell residue away from his face and off of the shoulder of his dark robes. He stepped inside his house, their house, and gave Lily a dutiful wave and ironic smile, “The usual five o’clock riots.”

 

Lily stood, approached him with far more seriousness than Tom felt he deserved, putting her hands on his shoulders and looking him straight in the eyes, “Tom, you know that isn’t funny.”

 

No, it wasn’t, but else was?

 

He just smiled fondly down at her, curling a strand of vermillion hair behind her ear, “Where’s Harry?”

 

“Napping,” Lily responded, “I just got her out of daycare. But Tom—”

 

Tom brushed her off, making his way towards the kitchen with the single thought that perhaps tea could somehow make this all less exhausting or put something in perspective, “I may be Muggle Studies professor, Lily, but I’ll remind you I had record breaking scores in Defense—”

 

Lily followed him into the kitchen, eyes narrowed beneath critical brows, shadows stretching under her eyes, “Years ago, Tom, when was the last time you even thought about dueling someone?”

 

Orion Black, on the glowing fields of Mars, so many years ago.

 

“I wasn’t doing the dueling,” Tom assured her as he summoned the kettle and started the fire beneath it, “I was simply getting out of the way.”

 

The odd patches of arson had turned into full-blown riots, pureblood heirs in masks marching through the streets and burning down anything that so much as hinted at anything muggle or worse yet Martian, and of course the aurors then coming down on them like the hounds of hell regardless of who happened to be in the way.

 

And to think, it had not been so long ago, that Tom had taught some of them.

 

Tom rubbed at his face as the kettle whistled, pouring first himself a cup and then Lily.

 

“Tom,” Lily started, she didn’t add anything to it, just looked at him exhausted from more than just a full-time job and looking after a child.

 

“I know,” Tom concurred softly, “But I suppose these are the times we live in.”

 

He had warded the house beyond all reasonable expectation, knowing that both as a muggle and a visitor to Mars he was the perfect status symbol, worse in that with James Potter rising through the ranks Tom very much doubted he could count on their support.

 

It was Harry, he supposed, that was vulnerable. During the summer it was not so bad, Tom was off then, but during the schoolyear Tom often thought of the fact that she was hidden so poorly in plan sight. If someone wanted to, if someone was clever and ruthless enough to make a statement against poor, proud, mudblood Tom Riddle…

 

If Tom was in their position, he would not have hesitated to make an example of the daughter.

 

“The times we live in,” Lily scoffed, sounding more like Tom with each passing day, it didn’t suit her, “Tom, it’s a bloody revolving door is what it is. We know who’s out there, everyone knows, but because it’s the Blacks, the Goyles, the Crabbes, the Notts, and the Malfoys funding it all no one is touching them.”

 

Every week, it seemed, they’d go into the auror department and then only a few hours later Bellatrix Black and her ilk would be walking right back out.

 

“It’s worse than that,” Tom said, looking down at his tea and his own exhausted reflection, “It’s not simply because of who they are. The Wizengamot itself, Lily, believes in their cause.”

 

They were the Wizengamot, the Blacks, the Potters, the Crabbes, the Goyles, each family having held onto a seat of their precious council for generations. Wizarding Britain liked the idea of democracy, pretended to play at it, but the bare bones of their government had not changed so much from those days when the wizarding community was ruled by the autocracy.

 

With a smile, Tom noted to his wife, “It wasn’t the aurors today.”

 

“It wasn’t—”

 

“The aurors decided, I suppose, not to make an appearance this time,” Tom said, “Apparently, they now believe that those darn kids will tire themselves out if they give them enough time. Or, so they say, I like to think they’re giving them enough time to get rid of all those things they find inconvenient. All those shops that have the gall to sell ballpoint pens!”

 

He slammed down his tea, ignoring the hot liquid sloshing over the side and onto his hands. He breathed in and out again, more than aware of how frazzled he must look, covered in a glittering rainbow of violence. Harry wasn’t old enough to realize what it was quite yet, but she was precocious enough Tom thought, that she knew whenever Tom looked like this, whenever he was so brightly colored with his hair sticking out away from his face, that it was never good.

 

He’d had to learn to give himself time, to prepare himself, before he walked in on her.

 

Lily leaned against the counter with him, face grim, “So then, we’re on our own now…”

 

“Not entirely,” Tom said, “There’s still that vigilante gang running through the streets.”

 

Tom didn’t know their names, they took enough means to disguise their identities (more than the rioters and arsonists tended to), but he’d spotted them more than once recently patrolling what was left of the muggleborn sectors of Diagon Alley . Which, with muggleborn shops closing left and right was sneaking closer and closer to the actual alleyway itself.

 

“I suppose there is that,” Lily said, not quite with relief, as Tom felt much the same.

 

They were now in a nation of gangs fighting gangs for territory, the auror department had lost all hint of control, and Tom could not help but wonder where it would go from here. Would the government choose to confront this now or would something more have to occur?

 

Would Tom be relieved his daughter was so young right now, that she might not remember this, or grieve that she had lost the opportunity for these relatively peaceful days? Tom couldn’t say, all he could do was cast cleaning charms on himself, straighten up, and nod at Lily before climbing the stairs to his daughter’s room.

 

* * *

 

 

“She’s very clever.”

 

Minerva had said this more than once regarding his and Lily’s daughter, yet each time she said it she seemed more surprised by the words. Amused and wonderous all at once, as if she had forgotten how precocious children before the age of eleven could truly be.

 

In Harry’s hands she held a butterfly made of light, wishes, and magic. Watched in joy and awe as this creation of hers took flight like a golden snitch already caught. She did not mind the winter weather, the crunch of the snows beneath her boots, or the eyes of her keepers while her mother was away at work and Tom had time off from Hogwarts to spend with her.

 

“I see you haven’t confronted her about magic yet,” Minerva said, turning a reprimanding and disapproving eye to Tom.

“I hardly know what you’re talking about,” Tom said slyly in turn, “All magic before the age of eleven is purely accidental.”

 

He then grinned as the girl ran towards them, dark auburn hair flying behind her and pale green eyes gleaming, “Daddy, look, I made a butterfly!”

 

Tom caught the butterfly on one outstretched finger and his daughter in his other arm, inspecting it as he did so. It was crude, a child’s image of a butterfly with none of its realism, and yet for all of that there was more craftsmanship here than Tom had seen in seventh years’ work. He smiled at it, leaned close, and blew softly causing its translucent golden wings to flutter. With a thought he painted cobalt and scarlet patterns on the wings and sent it into flight once more, this time with the energy of a snitch which wanted to be found.

 

With a shriek Harry took after it, leaving Tom and Minerva behind.

 

“You’ll break her heart when she goes to Hogwarts and has to leave all this behind,” Minerva warned, but there was a smile on her face, as if she could hardly blame him.

 

“She’ll tolerate it,” Tom said, after all, her mother had tolerated it, and long before Lily Evans Tom had tolerated it in far worse circumstances.

 

Then again, Tom thought as he watched her, Harry Riddle might not live in a world where she could tolerate it. There were so very many people who hated the very idea of her and who would hate her more so if she dared to live up to her potential.

 

If she couldn’t defend herself outside of Hogwarts’ walls…

 

“How are you, Tom?” Minerva asked, and Tom startled, realizing he must have looked quite grim for a moment there.

 

He considered lying, for a second, simply reporting that everything was fine or as fine as it ever was. However, looking at the aged face of his friend (so much older than his own for all that they were the same age) he couldn’t help but tell the truth, “These are troubled times, Minerva.”

 

“Yes,” Minerva said, her expression grim as well, and for the moment it did not matter that Tom had created this warded bubble of a world for his daughter, the shadows of reality crept in regardless.

 

It was too early, Tom thought, much too early for that.

 

“For god’s sake,” Tom said with a bitter laugh, thinking of Madam Malkins’ which had its glass shattered for daring to sell to muggleborn children, “They’re even in Diagon Alley now. They’re tearing up their own business, those same places they buy their own school supplies, because they loathe me and mine so much.”

 

“And the aurors of course have shown their true colors at last,” Tom spat, rubbing a hand through his hair and sighing. What good would righteous anger do him now? He was much too old for it, burnt out as it were, those were the emotions of a younger man.

 

“Tom, you know, one does not have to rely on the aurors,” Minerva said slowly, she turned and gave Tom a rather meaningful look, as if he was supposed to be reading more into this, “There are others, aurors among them, who know and will do good even if our government will not.”

 

“Tom,” Minerva said quietly, her words barely above a whisper as if even now, even here, someone might overhear them, “I remember that you were once very good at Defense.”

 

“Minerva,” Tom said slowly, not quite sure what he wanted to say or how he wanted to say it, “If we have lost the police, if we’re to become vigilantes or rely upon them, then we are already lost. If I could simply charge in and bundle each and every one of them and toss them at the feet of the aurors, if that would be enough, then I’d do it.”

 

He couldn’t help but smile, even as Minerva gave him an almost pitying if fond look, “But Minerva, we’ve done that already. They keep walking in and keep walking out. So, what would we do then, you and I?”

 

“We would try—” Minerva started but Tom shook his head and cut her off.

 

“We would become revolutionaries,” Tom said, “We would have to rip apart our very nation, create it into something where the sons who inherit everything inherit nothing, we’d have to become that very thing they fear and hate so desperately. A world, where someone like Tom Riddle, can have the power to throw them into Azkaban.”

 

He would, Tom suddenly realized, have to take up that forgotten mantle of Voldemort.

 

“You go too far, Tom,” Minerva scoffed but Tom was hardly finished, seeing out into the horizon of necessities as he was.

 

“And do you think they would stop at nothing short of death to see that through?” Tom asked, “The streets, Minerva, would run red with blood. No, I’m just one man, and a rather unambitious and old one at that.”

 

He had stayed this long, Tom thought, but when the time came to stir the embers of this great nation and see what spark caught because of it…

 

Tom would wish them luck, these young fools who fought the good fight, but as for Tom and his family. Well, if it was coming to this, then perhaps it was time to leave after all.

 

Tom hadn’t realized, though, that it had always been time to leave. He had simply been too distracted to judge the moment properly.

 

As for Minerva’s revolution, well, Tom would not think about that for a long time.

 

* * *

 

 

“No.”

 

That was Lily’s opinion that night in bed, a simple, inarguable, stubborn “no” as if that was all the answer she needed to give.

 

“No?” Tom asked in turn, moving so that he could look at her more closely, look at her in those green eyes of her and see what exactly it was that made her think now was the time to say no, “Lily, there isn’t going to be a better time and—”

 

“You have a life here Tom, a role in Hogwarts,” Lily started, rubbing at her face and sitting up fully, already tired of the argument before it had even started.

 

“Life can go on elsewhere and—”

 

“I know you don’t think it, Tom,” Lily spat before he could finish, “I know that for someone with your talents, your pride, you have such little self-worth it isn’t even funny. But Tom, Hogwarts needs you, now more than ever. You’re the muggle studies professor, you’re proof that people like us exist that—”

 

“I’m a parselmouth, Lily,” Tom reminded her.

 

“Not to them and you know it,” Lily said, “They need you here, Tom, otherwise all they’ll have is Bellatrix Black telling them what a muggle is. They don’t have to take your course, they don’t have to listen to you, but seeing you in and of itself is worth something.”

 

She held up a hand before he could respond, before he could say that she gave him far too much credit, that attendance in his classes was at an all-time low and that the pranks against him had gotten bolder by the minute.

 

“And I have a life here, Tom, your daughter should have a life here,” Lily said, “She should go to Hogwarts, where you and I went to school not—”

 

“Ubik would be fine,” Tom said, “Better than fine, she would—”  


“How on earth do you know that?” Lily asked, eyebrows raised, “Have you been there recently? Did you even see their school before you were kicked off the planet? And what will they say when they know she’s your daughter?”

 

“I know what they say here when they know she’s my daughter,” Tom responded in kind, and he knew what they’d be saying in a few years, because he’d heard it all himself before and Lily had as well.

 

Harry hadn’t heard it yet, not in any real context, only passing shouting in the streets as Tom gripped her hand tightly and pulled her swiftly to wherever they were heading. Even then, these days, direct apparition was better. If Tom wanted to loiter around, he’d do it at home.

 

No, what he suspected Lily wasn’t saying, what he was above pointing out, was that it would bring Azrael of Ubik careening like a meteor back into their lives. Instead of Tom’s strange, distant, pen pal he would become the uncle that Vernon Dursley never could be. A strange, alien, eternally youthful former flame of Tom that Lily could never understand and never truly block from her life. Tom knew that Lily wanted anything in the world but that.

 

Even if it meant staying here in the heat of a revolution that had not had the decency to break out yet.

 

“What good would come of it, Tom,” Lily said slowly, cupping his face in her hands gently, “If everyone ran away?”

 

They would live, that was what would come of it. Tom was a Slytherin for a reason and why Lily would think he’d have the nobility for words like that to work on him was beyond him. More, even if they would have once appealed to him, he was no longer a sixteen-year-old boy with dreams of grandeur. This was the life he had made himself, this small simple thing, and he would do his best to preserve it.

 

Even if that meant running away.

 

“You mistake me for a Gryffindor,” Tom said, his hands curling around hers, however Lily did not look insulted or cowed.

 

“You have more courage, I think, than you know,” Lily said, “Look at your muggleborn pride, even without really being a muggleborn at all—”

 

“The suits didn’t last,” Tom said, sadder somehow than he had any right to be, as if going about in public in wizard’s robes really had been the end of something instead of simple pragmatism.

 

“But you still have Muggle Studies, and you still have parseltongue, even though you’ve never used it,” Lily reminded him.

 

That was different, if he revealed that the Chamber of Secrets fiasco would eventually land back on his own head. More, what good would it do them truly, he had still married a muggleborn and had a half-blood daughter. It didn’t matter that he was descended from Salazar Slytherin himself, it would never matter, and at only sixteen Tom had realized that.

 

But perhaps that was what courage was, having enough pride to stand in place even when you should fold. And he did not want to be known as the man who had been the first to run.

 

He sighed, leaned his forehead against hers, “Lily, you will ruin us all.”

 

She just grinned back.

 

“Tomorrow morning,” Tom said, his eyes fluttering shut beneath a sudden exhaustion, “I’ll be cutting us off from the floo network.”


	43. Chapter 43

“I feel so unloved sometimes,” Lily said with a sigh as she walked in on Tom reading in the bedroom. At his questioning look she expanded, “She wants you to read the bedtime story.”

 

Oh, right. Tom didn’t know whether he should be embarrassed, surprised, or else a little flattered but as time had gone on their daughter had picked a favorite. That favorite, for whatever reason Tom couldn’t quite understand, wasn’t Lily.

 

And he really couldn’t understand it. Beneath his pretense of charm that had been so powerful in Hogwarts and then faded with time and the sheer lack of energy to devote to such pointless tasks he didn’t consider himself all that likeable. No, the world didn’t consider himself likeable, in Hogwarts everyone had loved Tom Riddle, a few years ago it’d been hard enough just managing to find enough people to come and witness his damn wedding.

 

The idea of children had been surreal enough, but even when he’d finally gotten used to the idea, he’d pictured himself a distant figure in the background who was there for support but always slightly out of reach.

 

Funny, how things would drift from your expectations.

 

He rubbed a hand over his face as he set the book aside with a sigh. He hadn’t been getting very far with it, by the time he’d trudged in here after updating the wards again, he’d been too exhausted to think and had ended up reading the same paragraph multiple times. Lily called him paranoid, Minerva hadn’t said it in those terms but she’d likely thought it as well, but at the very least it kept him busy and felt at least slightly productive. As it was he couldn’t stick the wards up that he really wanted to, not without a call from auror captain James Potter and the Department of Mysteries asking when and where Tom Riddle had become so proficient in foreign rune schemes.

 

They bloody well knew where, that was hardly a secret, they’d been the ones to take advantage of that in the first place. It’d been Tom, after all, who had been provisioned to crack Azrael’s wards around the school in exchange for an overlooked disappearance.

 

Rubbing his face, as he tried to massage himself back into a useful state, he asked, “Would she settle for you tonight?”

 

“Tom,” Lily said, “If you’re going to spend your whole day off playing with wards—”

 

He hated when she put it like that, she made it sound like he had been at the beach all day getting too enthusiastic about making sand castles.

 

“Then the least you can do is spend some time with your daughter,” she finished, crossing her arms and giving him a very pointed look, as if she was just daring him to bring up that Saturday was her day off as well and that she’d hijacked their daughter to the zoo before Tom could say another word.

 

Still, she had a very good point, and with another sigh he pushed himself up from the bed and wondered if he was for once feeling as old as he truly was even if he never seemed to look it. He didn’t remember feeling this tired in his twenties.

 

As it was, he thought as he made his way into his daughter’s room, she looked alarmingly more awake than he did. It was going to be a struggle, he thought, for her to be asleep before he was or even for him to make it through whatever story she wanted.

 

That was it, he thought, it was going to be a short one tonight. He summoned a book off the shelf as he sat on her bed, the pages automatically flipping through to the children’s story of choice, “So, Rabbity Babbity, how does that sound?”

 

She thought it over, then shook her head fiercely.

 

Tom agreed, he’d read that story far too many times in his tenure as a father, but he was really hoping for something short.

 

So, he did what he did best, and pretended he hadn’t seen, “Oh good, I was so happy to read Rabbity Babbity, you know it’s my favorite story.”

 

This was a patented lie, and if Harry was a little older, she probably would have called him on it. However, thankfully, in this moment she was not a little older and was stricken by the dilemma of denying her father his favorite bedtime story.

 

Yes, it really was a mystery why she didn’t like Lily better.

 

“Now, let’s see,” Tom said as he squinted at the page, forcing the letters to remain clear and focused so he could make it through this thing without passing out, “Rabbity Babbity lived in a small burrow near Babbling Brook—”

 

“Daddy?” her small voice interrupted.

 

Lord, he thought, please let him get through this one bedtime story. Please.

 

“Yes?” he asked, looking up from the page.

 

She looked somber, those pale eyes that were reminiscent both of his and Lily’s wide but intense, a small frown on her face as she looked across at him, “Why did they yell at me and mommy when we walked down the street today?”

 

Suddenly, Tom felt very awake, and wondered if they’d reached a point so low that Lily hadn’t even remembered to tell him that she and Harry had gotten heckled in the zoo of all places. Slowly, with a sigh, he closed Beedle and the Bard and put Rabbity Babbity and all his adventures to rest.

 

How was he supposed to explain racism to a five-year-old?

 

“Because they’re afraid,” he finally settled on, as that’s what it really was beneath the bitter hatred, the contempt, and the rage. They were afraid of change, afraid of losing what they already had, afraid of being swept away with the rest of them in a world they couldn’t control.

 

“Of me and mommy?” the girl asked, looking understandably confused.

 

“Of what you, what we, represent,” he explained, “Or what they think we represent at the very least.”

 

He wasn’t doing a good job of this, this was a difficult topic, hell it was one the magical British population itself couldn’t seem to quite understand. Here he was trying to explain it to a little girl, but she deserved an answer, a true answer, and the world was such a mess that he had no time to tell her to wait until she was older.

 

This was the world she lived in now and he had to do his best to help her understand.

 

“What does that mean?” she asked.

 

“A lot of people, when they’re sad, or angry, or hurt want to have a reason why, something they can control,” he said, lacing his hands together as he looked down at her, “Often, they want that something to have nothing to do with themselves. So, sometimes, they go and blame other people, people who they think aren’t like them.”

 

“People like us?”

 

“Yes, people like us,” he said before clarifying, “People who don’t come from large magical families going back generations.”

 

“They look at things they don’t like in the country, their position in it, all sorts of things and then they look at something different and they blame us for it.”

 

“But we didn’t do anything,” his daughter pointed out.

 

“Yes, and sometimes they know that, but they’ll say that our just being here is problem enough,” he said with a sigh, noting that he was leaving out the more horrifying details, of those who weren’t rational enough for even that but just liked to hurt other people.

 

He forced himself to smile then, rubbed her hair, “Just try not to end up in Slytherin.”

 

Harry, Tom was hoping, was much smarter and more worldly than he had been as a self-centered. over-ambitious, and too clever for his own good eleven-year-old who’d thought getting into Slytherin would make or break him.

 

He had not realized that what it really meant was putting up with the likes of Abraxas Malfoy for seven years.

 

“But mommy said that any house is—”

 

“Mommy was a Gryffindor,” Tom interjected with a strained smile, “Mommy doesn’t know what it’s like to be in Slytherin.”

 

Lily could afford to say nice things about accepting all the Hogwarts houses because she hadn’t had to put up with the bullshit Tom Riddle had. Well, at least, not all the bullshit Tom Riddle had, he supposed she hadn’t entirely escaped the Slug Clubs either.

 

God though, it was all coming back to him, seven years of Hogwarts. He’d loved the school, loved the magic, but Christ had he hated the people.

 

“Daddy?”

 

He blinked, looked down at her, “Right, well, daddy’s tired and that was a lot of hard stuff to talk about. We’ll read Babbity Rabbit—”

 

“Rabbity Babbity,” she corrected.

 

“Tomorrow,” Tom finished, gave her another smile, ruffled her hair, and then stood, said goodnight and tucked her in, and wandered back to his own bedroom where he collapsed on the bed and just before passing out noted, “Tomorrow, Lily, you get to talk about racism.”

 

* * *

 

 

Muggle Studies attendance was at an all-time low, and, as a result, the small party Tom threw for the taking of his few remaining advanced students OWL and NEWT exams was something far too lavish for the paltry amount that remained.

 

As it was, they themselves looked rightfully awkward and embarrassed by the ordeal, giving him lame excuses early in to escape back to the larger post-exam parties in their dorms, and Tom didn’t blame them in the slightest.

 

It did, however, leave him with an excess of punch and snacks.

 

“I should really stop celebrating these things,” he said to himself, “They just get sadder every year.”

 

The trouble was that it had always felt like something to celebrate. So few of his students stuck with the course that it seemed like a monumental achievement whenever any of them bothered to stay long enough to take that pitiful exam.

 

At least now though, with Arthur in the ministry as a muggle technology expert of sorts, they consulted him. Except, sadly, the man appeared to have forgotten everything Tom had ever taught him and seemed confused by the very idea of a currency that didn’t exist on the gold standard.

 

Still, it was something at least, and these days Tom would take anything he could get.

 

“Tom, my boy, I see you’ve just wrapped your annual party.”

 

And Tom’s day suddenly got much worse.

 

“Albus,” Tom said, looking over at the man with a smile that felt like it’d fall to pieces at any moment, “What a pleasant surprise.”

 

Dumbledore stepped into Tom’s office, summoned himself a cup of punch as well as a pastry, as if he had any right to step into this place. Tom supposed, being headmaster, the man did but Tom had never forgotten that this was the same asshole that had seen fit to pretend to light all of Tom’s possessions on fire to teach a miserable little boy a lesson.

 

He rather doubted that Dumbledore had forgotten it either.

 

Despite being on the same staff theirs was a relationship of strained politeness. Dumbledore no doubt waiting for Tom to snap in that megolomanic fit he’d always suspected and Tom living with the delightful suspicions that Dumbledore had had more than a small hand in Tom being denied that Defense position all those years ago.

 

God forbid Tom corrupt the children, after all.

 

“Indeed,” Dumbledore said with a laugh, taking a seat next to Tom, “You think they passed?”

 

“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” Tom said, “It’s always hard to tell as it seems that the Muggle Studies exam drifts further and further from reality with each passing year.”

 

It seemed that the Ministry of Magic had only just realized that the muggles had now been to the moon multiple times. In a desperate attempt to rationalize how this was possible, rather than asking Tom himself how they managed it, they put together an entire section on the exam related to the fire crabs the muggles had illegally harvested in order to fuel their flying tin cans.

 

Dumbledore laughed, like this was all very pleasant and charming, and as if he was truly enjoying Tom’s company.

 

Tom, looking at his empty room, decided that he didn’t have to put up with this, “What is it you want?”

 

“Ah, Tom,” the man said, expression growing grave, “I had hoped that I could talk to you without having to need something.”

 

“That ship sailed a very long time ago,” Tom said, “You and I don’t simply talk to one another, do we?”

 

“Right,” Dumbledore said with a sigh, and then he said something odder than that, “I’ve come to regret that, you know.”

 

“You were such a brilliant but… problematic child,” the man said with a great sigh, giving Tom a meaningful look, one that was meant to pin him to his seat and give him no room to move, “I judged you too harshly, was convinced that the child you were would grow into a man even worse, you do understand, don’t you?”

 

“Oh,” Tom said, unable to help the small, cruel smile that grew on his lips, “I have always understood.”

 

Wasn’t it strange, Tom thought, that the man couldn’t fully admit that he was wrong? No, instead it was that Tom, somehow, miraculously had not grown into Dumbledore’s expectations of him. Here, Dumbledore very likely thought he was being the bigger man in admitting it had been possible for him to make a mistake.

 

“I was wrong though,” Dumbledore admitted, “I do believe that now, and times such as they are, we cannot avoid allies simply because of our history.”

 

“Really?” Tom asked drily.

 

“We have an obligation, my boy,” Dumbledore said gravely, setting down his punch on the table, “To step up in these troubled times, to stand not for what is easy, but for what is right even when so many others will not.”

 

Why did this sound so very familiar? Tom thought to himself. Hadn’t, only a few months ago, Minerva dropped alarmingly similar and unnerving statements about doing something that must be done.

 

“Not that I don’t enjoy cryptic chit chat,” Tom noted coldly, “But what is it you want?”

 

Dumbledore didn’t speak for a moment, instead observed Tom in turn, looking for something he could use against him, some chink in Tom’s armor. Finally, he said, “I suspect, and believe you suspect as well, that someone is behind all of this. All these recent upsets, the agitation among the purebloods, everything coming to a head here and now when for decades nothing had come of it.”

 

Tom couldn’t help but laugh at the sheer absurdity of what the man was saying, “Forgive me, sir, but you aren’t muggleborn. This has always been there, bubbling under the surface, and we all knew that any day it was going to boil over with all hell breaking loose.”

 

“Your fifth year, do you remember, the strange epidemic that resulted in young Myrtle’s death?”

 

Tom froze, forced himself to remain calm and show nothing, but Dumbledore didn’t look as if he was fishing for information. As if he had put two and two together regarding Tom Riddle and the chamber of secrets, remembered that a young and ignorant Tom Riddle had confessed an ability to speak to snakes, and that a basilisk could paralyze much more consistently than an acromantula.

 

“Rubeus Hagrid was blamed, falsely I believe, due to his pet acromantula and expelled from the school. However, I never believed that, Rubeus was never a malicious character for all of his eccentricities regarding magical beasts. No, I suspect it was someone else entirely.”

 

“Do you?” Tom asked, tone revealing nothing, voice revealing nothing at all.

 

“Your strange friend, the Hufflepuff Azrael, disappeared right before the chamber was opened. Do you remember that? And months later descriptions from the continent in great battles, far beyond a Hogwarts’ student’s capabilities, matched him.”

 

“Azrael?” Tom balked, even as inside he felt his heart clenching, as Dumbledore was putting together the wrong conclusions yet somehow coming to the right answers.

 

“Grindelwald had an object of great power, unspeakable power that allowed him to wage war on Europe. Yet, after he was defeated, the object was gone with the man in black having laid claim to it, and only a few months after that a wizard far beyond normal human capabilities has set up a utopia on Mars and crowned himself an ageless emperor. A man I believe to be none other than Hogwarts’ missing Azrael.”

 

Tom wanted to laugh, to deny it, or if not deny it then truly confess that Azrael had never been one to grab at power for all that it had landed in his lap anyway. Tom had hated that, when he was younger, had hated that the person who didn’t seem to want it at all was the one who got it while Tom himself had earned nothing.

 

“You must be joking,” Tom said finally, laughing and covering his anxiety with a drink of punch, “Even with some… Fantastical object of myth, to get to Mars? To set up an entire civilization overnight? To convince the entire world that he’s some sort of alien god with magic that we’ve never seen before?”

 

“Your friend was always alarmingly talented,” Dumbledore interjected, “Even more so than you, I’m afraid.”

 

“He was fifteen!” Tom cried out, setting down his punch with enough force that it sloshed over his hand, suddenly feeling as if the room was too small and Dumbledore was too close, “He was fifteen and no one expected anything from him. And to what end? Why leave Hogwarts and do all of this? And how?!”

 

“I’m afraid that you and I are not people equipped to answer those questions. I don’t know how and I have hoped my suspicions as to why are dearly wrong.”

 

“You forget that I’ve met him,” Tom scoffed, foot now tapping uncontrollably as he felt the need to pace or else throw Dumbledore out of his office, “Both Azrael as well as the emperor, I am in fact one of two men in wizarding Britain to have ever met the latter—”

 

“And I suspect he put on a very good show, aided by the fact that a Hogwarts student of that age had no business being there,” Dumbledore said, “Not to mention, that unless I am mistaken, you only met him on a few very brief occasions.”

 

Ah, because they didn’t know where Tom had been all those months. For all that they suspected where Tom Riddle might have gone it was never official and Tom would be truly damned if he confessed to it now. On the books, Tom Riddle had only ever met with the emperor twice. Once when they had first met in person, Tom Riddle following Orion Black’s lead, and a second time when they and their countrymen had been thrown off the planet.

 

“But why?” Tom asked.

 

Dumbledore considered Tom for a moment, all hint of a smile or a grandfatherly persona gone, and finally the man remarked, “I had a friend, once, who craved power. Like you I didn’t realize it, didn’t want to see how far he would dare to go. More, like you I was ambitious and impoverished, but due to time and circumstances grew out of it even when my dear friend did not.”

 

Finally, without a hint of doubt, the man said, “I believe that Ubik, the emperor, has been purposefully destabilizing the statute of secrecy for decades, purposefully heightening the violence surrounding muggleborns in this country, and poaching from our muggleborn populations in order to not only exact revenge on magical Britain and force us into ruin but to create an empire in line with what Gellert Grindelwald aimed to create so many years ago. A society, in which the statute of secrecy is abolished, but muggles and muggleborns are made serfs and slaves to a ruling wizard elite.”

 

Dumbledore didn’t allow Tom to interrupt, to ask if he was serious or even mad, if he believed that one man could play such a long and pointless game for something so worthless as an idea of society. That Dumbledore suspected Azrael was what a fourteen-year-old Tom Riddle had envisioned Voldemort could be.

 

“You are, Tom, an extraordinary wizard,” Dumbledore said, this time a small smile returning to his face, “In truth you deserved that Defense position, more so than anyone we’ve found in the decades since, and Britain needs you now more than ever.”

 

He extended an envelop to Tom, one empty of any address, a magical seal on the back to ensure that Tom and Tom alone could open it, “Tom, my boy, I have put together a group of young, extraordinary, and courageous witches and wizards who will step up to protect people like your family even when the aurors will not. All you need to do, before the date inside the letter, is approach myself or Minerva.”

 

For once, Tom was speechless, looking at the letter and stumbling over words, “But I—”

 

“As you said, you are one of two men in this country who has ever been to Mars. You are the most knowledgeable wizard I know when it comes to muggle culture. And you were once an extraordinary duelist,” Dumbledore smiled, reached over to squeeze Tom’s shoulder, and noted, “Think about it, Tom.”

 

And just like that the man was gone, leaving a bewildered Tom Riddle alone behind him, wondering if all these conspiracy theories after all these years was still somehow a trap for him. Or, if perhaps, Dumbledore was more honest than Tom had ever suspected and truly did believe Azrael was all Tom had once dreamed Voldemort would be.

 

In the end though, instead of burning it or throwing it away, Tom somehow found himself shoving that letter into his pocket.


	44. Chapter 44

The letter stayed in his coat pocket, neither destroyed, nor read.

 

Tom had likely missed the date inside, whatever meeting it was Dumbledore had wished to invite him to, and Dumbledore’s league of extraordinary gentlemen slipped away like the morning fog leaving only a perplexed Tom Riddle behind.

 

But Dumbledore had stressed it himself, that word young, and however he looked Tom wasn’t a young man anymore. That kind of work, passion, and reckless heroism was for a younger sort than him. The prospect of fighting against these hateful children, of taking measures to stop them permanently or else watching as they came back again, filled him not only with exhaustion but a sense of dread.

 

They kept acting as if this was some kind of isolated loathsome quirk of their society. And perhaps the violence, the arson, the ruthless measures the recently graduated youth of Hogwarts were taking was but Tom believed that to be a symptom and far from the cause. The pureblood sentiments spread further than anyone would dare to admit and the feeling one got from the Wizengamot was silent approval.

 

How many would they have to fight against before Dumbledore’s bad of vigilantes realized they were in the vast minority?

 

However, despite all his doubts, his suspicions of Dumbledore and his motives, the letter stayed in his pocket. Even after school ended and summer commenced, Tom finding himself spending the days with his daughter that Lily couldn’t, that damned letter was still in his pocket.

 

So, it was in his pocket even as, on an early summer morning in Diagon Alley, he carried the girl on his shoulders. There had been an almost desperate boom of marketing and events in Diagon Alley as soon as summer had begun, an attempt to draw students and their families back over the holidays when arson and violence had driven them away.

 

That was something the Wizengamot, surprisingly, did not approve of. Burn down the muggle shops, sure, but to try and torch Diagon Alley merely for selling goods to muggleborns? That was when the anti-muggleborn sentiment started to become a cancer that ate away at them as well. As a result even today there was a small auror presence, they had passed by the young captain James Potter as they’d apparated him, Tom had caught his eye for the briefest moment.

 

The contempt inside them had not faded over time. Tom suspected it never truly would, and all he could do was silently turn both himself and his daughter away from the man, tugging her towards the bookstore.

 

Lily had been insistent on that. Not so much going to bookstores, but going out, continuing to visit Diagon Alley even with everything happening. Tom supposed he understood; what kind of a world was he building if he kept his family trapped inside their small home? A safe one, but only that, the world was wider than a house and perhaps Tom shouldn’t be afraid of it.

 

The world had always, in its own way, been dangerous. This, whatever this was, it didn’t change much. Except, of course, when something did happen.

 

There was a moment, as they peered as a pair into the glass of the bookstore window, Harry pointing at some book or another, that almost seemed to stand still. It slowed, just for a moment, and then almost stopped altogether. A hand, pointing, a smile on her face, and the bright blue sky overhead.

 

And then, looking to his left, only a few buildings down the street, there at one of the few wizarding bookstores that dared to sell muggle books, black smoke billowed upwards. It was that dark, heavy, substance with flashed of purple lightening trapped inside, fueled by fire from dark magic.

 

“Time to leave,” Tom said, his voice sounding distant to himself, and without another word or any reassurance he made to apparate.

 

Normally, that was more than enough, they burned the building and then they ran. However, today it seemed they meant to leave an impression not just on the mudblood upstarts but on the wizards as well. That, or perhaps the aurors were bound and determined to truly catch them this time and had sealed off the exits. Tom found himself, instead of whipping through time and space and falling into his home with Harry collapsing over top of him, running into that invisible brick wall of anti-apparition wards.

 

“Daddy?”

 

Tom groaned, blood trickling down his nose, and in a daze moved Harry down from his shoulders to his back, moving from a jog into a fast paced run as he tried to find the boundary of the wards, praying that it was the aurors behind it and not the arsonists.

 

People were starting to panic, it wasn’t too crowded today, but it was crowded enough that there was screaming, pushing, and shoving everywhere as they realized they couldn’t get out this time. Tom felt’s someone’s elbows jabbing him in the ribs, shoving him to the side to make way for a man in colorful wizard’s robes fleeing ahead. Some were shoving their way into shops, seeking shelter or else the floo network, completely blocking doorways. The bright lights of dueling spells began to appear, shooting out over the crowds and buildings.

 

He didn’t have to run far, the wards only extended to the end of the street, a small quarantined section of Diagon Alley. He pressed forward, but as he suspected, it wasn’t simply anti-apparition but a physical ward as well. The aurors, however corrupt and inept they were, hadn’t made this.

 

No, someone had gotten very clever and very ambitious. They’d selected the section of Diagon Alley most tolerant of muggleborns and caged it in with whatever poor fools were trapped inside. They were to be made an example of.

 

They had to have been planning this for months.

 

Tom carefully set Harry down on the ground, staring directly into her eyes and gripping her shoulders tightly, “Harry, I need you to stay very quiet and very still. I have to collapse their wards and I have to do it quickly. It will only be a few moments, but I need you to be quiet and I need you to stay right here next to me.”

 

She looked up at him, blue green eyes wide and dazed. He gripped her shoulders tighter, “Do you understand?”

 

Slowly, she nodded, but it was enough. He placed his hand on her head and thought of something cold and absent, the idea of the absence of space, and watched as his daughter disappeared momentarily from view.

 

He then turned to the wards, not casting anything himself for interference with the magic, closed his eyes and searched for any hint of weakness in its armor. Whoever had done this was good, better than Tom would have expected from a recently graduated schoolboy, whoever this was had likely been top of his class in Hogwarts which narrowed it down. Still, it was a young person’s work, and if Tom had had more time he would have considered it laughable. As it was time was against him and whatever weakness there was he had to find and exploit it now.

 

Behind him there was screaming, strange thuds and then sobs, spells screamed at one another, the crackling of buildings burning, and mad laughter. Distantly, he felt a small hand clutch at the fabric of his pants too tightly.

 

“Dadd—”

 

“ _Avada Kedavera!_ ”

 

Tom whirled tugging the invisible Harry to the side, unwittingly breaking the spell on her in his panic. Wandlessly he flung his opponent backwards, watching as she crumpled and groaned against a rapidly collapsing building. For a moment, with her dark hair flared out around her, he thought he recognized her. If he stayed a moment longer he’d be able to place exactly who she was.

 

But he didn’t have a moment.

 

Instead of the spell missing entirely, as Tom moved he watched as it narrowly missed his daughter and instead made to clip his shoulder.

 

For a moment, a single second, he somehow had the time to try and step forward through the wards anyway. To push Harry through them, for a single second, they rippled. But it was only a second, and then it hit him.

 

There was a flash, a green flash, even though the light hadn’t hit his eyes it was as if it took his whole vision. A flash and then everything went black, the wind was knocked out of him, and cold radiated through his chest.

 

Without warning, without any ability to stop it, his legs collapsed under him and if he hit the ground he couldn’t feel it. By that point everything was black.

 

The only thing to interrupt the darkness was a single, soundless, second flash of green light.

 

* * *

 

 

He was at the edge of time again, past everything and everyone that had ever existed, staring out into that abyss filled with nothing but empty planets circling distant stars. Sitting there, he couldn’t feel anything, everything felt distant both his body and his feelings.

 

He only knew he shouldn’t be here, that he had been doing something desperately important, and that being here was not something he was allowed to do.

 

Yet, graveyards were filled with indispensable men, weren’t they?

 

There was something in his hand.

 

He looked down, there, glittering and golden, was that strange little machine Azrael had made so long ago in Hogwarts. A tiny golden necklace made of hundreds upon hundreds of tiny clock gears each notched together.

 

“What are you building, anyway?” a younger, so much younger, Tom Riddle had asked inside Hogwarts’ room of requirement.

 

Azrael’s memory, then in the guise of a child, had answered as he bent over his works, “A variety of things. They may prove important later.”

 

“Care to be more specific?”

 

“Hm, I suppose I could be,” a pause, the memory of this same machine, and then, “I doubt you’d care about the specifics, as you call it, but a summary is decent enough. It’s insurance.”

 

“Insurance?”

 

“In a sense,” another pause, so many words left unsaid that Tom had been too young and contemptuous to catch, “I’ve taken quite a gamble recently and I’m not certain I’ll have an agreeable outcome yet.”

 

He’d never explained it further than that, never used it, never called it anything but insurance. Yet, Tom couldn’t help but look down at it in surreal fascination and horror, adrift from the real world in this strange limbo.

 

Here, it seemed almost natural to know exactly what it was, “It’s time. He was building a way to control time.”

 

In case Tom Riddle had turned out to match that template of his, in case Azrael had found something in Tom Riddle he could no longer bare and couldn’t dare to enable, Azrael had made a mechanism to manipulate time at his whim in case anything ever went wrong.

 

Looking up from the pendant and his gears Tom noticed a thin trail of golden light extending from it, moving upwards into the stars themselves, flowing through the gears where it was ground down into fine particles of golden sand. The visible ripples of time, that Tom had always seen since that day on Mars, were being drawn into the memory of this machine.

 

* * *

 

 

When Tom woke up, there was no necklace in hand, only an unread letter in his pocket. The street was burning but the fires contained, the aurors had broken down the wards and now appeared to be tallying the damages and preparing next steps, James Potter at their head.

 

And there on the ground next to him, Tom Riddle’s only daughter was dead.


	45. Chapter 45

“Merlin,” a sighed, entirely too mellow, curse.

 

It hardly mattered, Tom could barely hear it, he could barely hear or see anything. He was caught in a kind of daze, had been since he’d opened his eyes and found Harry…

 

They’d apparated him and his daughter to the ministry, he hadn’t let them take her body, instead, somehow, he’d transfigured what was left of her into a stone in jacket pocket along with the letter. On a living, breath, girl the results of that would have been catastrophic. But Harry wasn’t in that shell anymore, so it didn’t matter.

 

Then he’d sat there, not in a cell this time, but in a small quiet office as men and women he couldn’t seem to recognize hustled about the place, screaming at one another, as they attempted to understand what the hell had happened.

 

But Tom was underwater, caught in this strange waking dream, and they were all moving far too fast. All he could do was sit, stare ahead and see nothing, and think absolutely nothing at all.

 

“Riddle,” the voice said again, insistent, then with a softer sigh, “Riddle, I’m…”

 

A pair of glasses placed on the desk in front of him, next to a golden name plane, the words engraved but meaningless. He couldn’t seem to read them; he couldn’t seem to read anything.

 

“It wasn’t… It’s not just her,” the man continued, and his voice was familiar for all that it was hoarse and strained from spell work and emotion, in another time and place Tom would know it, but for now it seemed entirely irrelevant, “You’re the only bloody civilian who survived that clusterfuck. They did some real work out there, collapsing the wards and the floo, only a few minutes but they did some bloody real work.”

 

The glasses were picked up again, but Tom didn’t look, his eyes had stayed on the nameplate, trying to read the letters. It was English, he knew it was English, but it was as if he couldn’t comprehend them for all that he could see them. The name just wouldn’t come.

 

“Riddle, look at me.”

 

Finally, Tom looked up. A schoolboy dressed as an auror captain stared back at him. His hair was too long, a shock of thick black hair that curled out in every direction, made him look as if he’d missed his calling in a boy band. His thick glasses only seemed to accentuate his youth, perched as they were on an aristocratic pureblood nose. His face though was smudged with the greasy aftermath of fires and spells, his proud red uniform stained, frayed, and torn.

 

James Potter, yes, Tom suddenly remembered that this was none other than James Potter.

 

Tom disliked this man, worse, Potter hated him. How was it, Tom wondered, that he’d been shuffled off to Potter’s office?

 

“Riddle, you’re the only—” Potter cut himself off, grimacing, wiping a hand through his hair and giving it an even more windswept look, “Merlin, we’re going to need your memory.”

 

“My memory?” Tom asked, it was the first thing he’d said since… Since it had happened. The words felt rough, dry, and awkward in his throat. Like they didn’t truly belong to him.

 

“You’re the only one whose seen any of them,” Potter said, leaving unsaid that many others had seen them, they were simply not among the living anymore. As Tom himself, for a moment, had been anywhere but among the living.

 

Tom said nothing, and his silence must have spoken for itself, because Potter moved forward.

 

“Do you want them off the streets?” Potter asked, dark eyes flashing, “You want to make sure this never happens again?”

 

“The memory of one man is not enough for that,” Tom said quietly, his voice toneless and heartless, a thing deprived of any true feeling. He felt, even now, as if he were floating from himself.

 

Some part of him forgot that he was carrying his daughter’s body in his pocket, that if he turned around, she’d be there, or if he simply apparated home she’d—

 

“Riddle,” Potter started and finally something seemed to break through in Tom, some hint of the hurricane that had been held off by sheer disbelief.

 

“Bellatrix Black,” Tom hissed, and watched as Potter reeled back, cursing. Tom could only laugh, knowing the answer just as well as Potter, “You’re telling me that you people would take Bellatrix Black to trial before the Wizengamot?”

 

“She’s never done this before—”

 

“She’ll get a slap on the wrist,” Tom interjected, feeling a deranged grin growing on his face, “Perhaps, she’ll be married off, it’s the Black way, after all. And so much more of a clean and honorable solution than a trial.”

 

 For a moment Potter said nothing, just looked across at him with silent accusation and bitterness, then he asked, “And what have you been doing about it, Riddle?”

 

Tom’s mouth opened but Potter didn’t give him a chance, “You talk big, you always have, but what have you done? You’re just one of those people who sits around and does nothing. Not a bad person, not a good person either, but one of those people who just lets it come to this even while being one of the bloody few who can admit it’s happening.”

 

Potter grimaced, a poor attempt at a cruel smile, and said, “I don’t know why you’re acting shocked when it starts affecting you.”

 

Tom felt the shadows wavering beneath his feet, a cold and invisible miasma growing in the air as the hairs stood on the back of both his and Potter’s necks. Frost began to form at the edge of Potter’s glasses and the windows, the shutters vibrating ever so slightly.

 

“You forget, Potter,” he said quietly, the ice in his words as well as the air, “That she was Lily Evans’ daughter too.”

 

Potter had nothing to say to that, looked as if the wind had been punched out of him. Both of them, in fact, appeared to be out of things to say to each other.

 

With trembling hands, Tom picked up his wand, created a vial out of thin air and began to pull out silver strands of memory. Not much of it, just the moment, that strange surreal morning in the alley, the flash of Black’s face and unbound hair, and Tom’s own brief death and survival left conveniently out.

 

No matter what had happened, no matter what Tom might deserve for this, he wouldn’t hand his damnation so easily over to them.

 

Without a word, he shoved the floating strands of memory over towards Potter, who at least nodded with some gratitude as he vanished it off to the aurors’ pensieves. Then they sat in silence, each waiting for the other to make some move, the only sound left the quiet ticking of a clock on the wall.

 

“I am sorry for your loss,” Potter finally said, “I know I didn’t say it but—”

 

“Don’t,” Tom said simply, he didn’t need that, not from the likes of Potter even if, for the moment, the man meant it.

 

“You know, we couldn’t have gotten through so fast without you,” Potter said, a small smile growing on his face, “You did a real number on their wards. I know that doesn’t mean much to you but—”

 

Potter sighed, wiped at his face again, rubbing at his eyes beneath his glasses, and with a small chuckle he said, “They’re wanting to call you the man who lived, I bet you the prophet picks it up and runs straight to hell with it too.”

 

He almost opened his mouth to answer that, perhaps, he’d rather be among those who had died. Living, being trapped in this hateful mortal world, didn’t seem like such a triumph anymore.

 

Instead, he only offered a weak smile, and said, “I think that I’d like to go home now, Captain.”

 

Potter stood, looked for a moment like the chagrinned schoolboy he’d so recently been, “Right, yes, of course.”

 

Inside his jacket pocket, the rock that was his daughter’s body weighed heavily along with a letter that he suddenly wished he had opened. Still, all the same, it was time to go home and try to find a way to tell his wife.

 

* * *

 

 

It wasn’t like him, with Lily, there was no period of shock for her. Tom still felt as if he was floating, not quite in this world but not quite in the other, Lily looked as if she was drowning. She clung to their daughter’s body, preserved now with magic no one would ever cast on a living being, and was gripping brightly colored clothing much too tightly.

 

All he could do was watch, feeling as if he was floating further and further away from the pair of them.

 

He waited for the screaming accusations, that he should have done something, that he should have protected her, and why couldn’t he have managed to do something right for once in his miserable existence. She didn’t, she just bent over and sobbed, unable to look at anything.

 

“Lily,” he breathed, moving down to sit across from her and Harry, but Lily just shook her head violently, voice hitching.

 

Shuddering, pressing her face into Harry’s shirt, she choked out a question, “Aren’t you going to say it?”

 

It was barely understandable, slurred by sobs and crocodile tears, and even then, he felt as if he was too far away to understand what it could mean. Lily, however, didn’t wait for his answer. Instead she finally looked up, eyes red and swollen, tears cascading down her red face, “You said we should leave, before any of this. You said we should go and I said no!”

 

“Lily,” he repeated, moving forward to touch her, but she knocked his hand away.

 

“I killed her! I killed our daughter!”

 

“You weren’t there,” he said, rushing forward to grab her hands, to look anywhere but at Harry, so pale and still beneath them, “I was there! I was right there an I did nothing! You weren’t there and you weren’t wrong! You weren’t—”

 

“What’s the point if she’s dead?!” Lily asked, voice hoarse and cracking as she tried to tear her hands out of his, “Why care about this country, these people, if they’re just going to kill her anyway?!”

 

“Because you believed in the future!”

 

He pulled her into a too tight embrace, squeezing her so tightly that he felt every shuddering sob as if it was his own, “You believed in a future she could have here, that things could, and would, get better if we could peacefully fight for them. I wish I could believe in that. Even after—Even now, I wish I could believe in that so badly that it hurts.”

 

Lily said nothing, her face warm with tears against his own, the shoulder of his robes becoming soaked. He squeezed his eyes shut, mindlessly rocking and pulling her with him, “I’ll fix this, I’ll fix this, I promise. It will be like this never happened, and we’ll stay, and we’ll make that world for her. I promise, I promise, Lily, I promise…”

 

Lily pulled back, shaking, and placed her hands on his face as she tried to gently smile at him, “Wishes don’t bring back the dead, Tom.”

 

No, but Tom had more than wishes, he had friends in high places and access to a power he himself had never understood and never dared to fully investigate. The floodgates were open now though, and what Tom had been unable to do for glory and ambition he would do for them.

 

“I’ll do it, Lily,” he swore, feeling the light that was his magic fluttering with the desire to bind him to those words, to make it more than just words ever could be, “I’ll turn back time if I have to.”

 

She leaned forward, resting her forehead against him, and quietly, barely audible at all, said, “You know, if you do manage it, I might even rather be on Mars.”

 

He laughed, unable to help himself even through the tears, and wondered if she knew how much convincing it would take her to agree to that. She started laughing in turn, the smile breaking through the tears, like a brief ray of sunlight.

 

Funny, neither of them could find anything to say after that.

 

* * *

 

 

The funeral was a small and unpublicized affair, there were several funerals going on, after all.

 

Minerva and Arthur with his family were both in attendance. His in-laws, Lily’s sister, husband, and child were nowhere in sight. Dumbledore made an appearance, wearing unnaturally dark clothing, offering grim and quiet condolences, and no mention was made of letters unread (Albus knew well enough that Tom remembered). Captain Potter appeared and while his condolences were directed mostly towards Lily, Tom earned a nod as well.

 

It was Azrael, however, dressed as Harry Evans in an oversized funeral suit, that Tom had been waiting for.

 

“Tom, I am so sorry,” he said, and you could see that he meant it, his pale features twisted into a horrified grief. As if the girl truly had been his niece, rather than a child he’d heard about only through distant letters and seen only through the odd photograph or two.

 

Tom said nothing for a moment, just looked at his friend, the man who had once been and perhaps still was his only true friend. Then, directing attention away from them, leaving the guests to Lily and the rest of the wake, he said, “Do you remember, when we were in Hogwarts, when we first became friends, you built a device you called insurance?”

 

Azrael stilled, that thin guise of humanity all at once disappeared from him, and those eyes that looked so like Lily’s started to burn in a way hers never could, “What are you talking about, Tom?”

 

“You never told me what it was,” Tom continued, as if nothing had changed and the man hadn’t reacted at all, “As far as I know, you’ve never used it. But you built it just the same, in case things went wrong. Azrael, haven’t things gone wrong?”

 

“You don’t know what you’re asking me, Tom,” the man said, his eyes never straying from Tom’s, “Death happens, it is natural and—”

 

“Not to me!” Tom hissed, watching as Azrael recoiled as if a cobra had just reared its head in front of him, “And not this soon, not like this, it doesn’t have to be like this, does it?”

 

“You don’t know what you’re—”

 

“Time,” Tom spoke over him, “I want time, I want this, all of this, undone and a second chance to make sure this never happens again!”

 

“So does everyone—”

 

“I am not everyone!” Tom shouted, he breathed in, out, forced himself to speak at a normal volume, “If you could do it then, if you were prepared to do it, then you owe me this. After everything that’s happened, please, you owe me something and I will never ask for any favor again.”

 

“Time is not as flexible as you think,” Azrael said, and he looked young, younger than he had in years even as his hand unwilling twisted in the air, produced that strange metal necklace he’d created all those years ago, “There are consequences, Tom, not just to our actions but how much we meddle with the fabric of time and space. Stretch it so far and… and eventually it will break.”

 

Tom snatched the necklace, the time machine, from Azrael’s grasp. It was warm in his hand and growing hotter by the second, as if it was burning.

 

Tom Riddle no longer cared whether the world burned. After all, he had finally found the courage and recklessness he’d lacked.

 

“Think, Tom,” Azrael pleaded, stepping forward with wide eyes, “Think about what you have, what you could still lose.”

 

Tom looked over at Lily, talking quietly with Arthur, and for a moment it was as if something was strangling his heart. Still, he said, “I’ve been told, recently, that I’m braver than I know.”

 

If Tom couldn’t risk this, if he couldn’t move beyond grief and complacency, then he was everything Potter had claimed he was and more. Cowardice could never be allowed to conquer him again.

 

Without another word, with only a soft, parting, smile, he opened his palm and looked at the necklace and its cogs. With an instinct he couldn’t place, he carefully nudged the gears with magic to spin backwards, and with them the world and its funeral parlors disappeared.

**Author's Note:**

> After having said so much about this story on fanfiction I find I have little to say about it here. Simply that, look upon my tags ye mighty and despair, and if one cannot stomach them then one had best look elsewhere. Also, if you still feel the need to crucifix me for my shenanigans, then behold the comment section and I await your judgement.
> 
> To those of you who are new and not from the wonderful world of fanfiction.net, hello, feel free to ignore the above. This story is... strange and not for everyone. Mostly what it centers upon, far more than all that romance, is Tom Riddle's very strange life.
> 
> Comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Lord of All](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18836458) by [Eurasian_Lynx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eurasian_Lynx/pseuds/Eurasian_Lynx)




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